


A Blight Upon the Land

by squirrelofthenight



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-10-25 21:46:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 36,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10773090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirrelofthenight/pseuds/squirrelofthenight
Summary: An imagining of the events towards the end of the First Blight.In -203 Ancient, Dumat, the first archdemon, was slain. This is the story of the Wardens who did it.Original cast, original story, just a possibility of what might have happened long ago.(You'll figure out how the DA:O characters tie in.)





	1. -203 Ancient, the Silent Plains

Isera’s staff had broken. She had utterly exhausted her magical energy, and she had a wound in her side that was pumping blood out into the mud in earnest.  
But the archdemon was before her, and she could not stop now.  
Every movement an agony, she dragged herself towards it; through bleary eyes she saw Aemilia before it, wreathed in flame and lightning as she threw spell after spell at the great dragon. Her brother Camven’s daggers were scratching a thousand wounds into its neck as he dodged the claws that kept coming for him, longer than Isera was tall and already soaked with the blood of a hundred Wardens.  
Where were they pulling the energy from? Isera couldn’t even begin to imagine as she crawled, tasting blood haunting the back of her throat, one of her legs utterly unresponsive from some forgotten injury.  
Isera was going to die. Her mind was slow, but it grasped that with startling certainty. She was too far gone to recover now. Surely infection was already festering in her flesh, but even so the blood loss would certainly kill her first.  
The archdemon screeched and reeled back from some unknown blow. Isera finally reached it and, slow as she was, it didn’t register when she crawled underneath its scaled underbelly to lay beneath it. If it fell, it would crush her – an agonising death. But if it fell because she killed it, then she would be happy, having given her life for the Wardens, for the end of the Blight.  
Once, she had believed that the Blight truly was the end of the world, back when Camven had been dying before her and hope had been lost. But then, the Wardens came.  
Then, there was hope. Light in the darkness.  
Scrabbling in the dirt, Isera’s clumsy fingers found the hilt of a blade – a broken, almost just shards, blade, but it would be enough. It would have to be enough.  
She saw a chink in the scales, a place to strike, to drive the blade in with all her strength and all the magical energy that she could muster in a fatal blow. It just needed to be weak enough for that to be the end.  
“AEMILIA!” Isera cried, her throat raw and painful. “GIVE IT EVERYTHING!”  
Through tears, Isera beheld Aemilia hear her cry and throw her arms wide with a bellow, sending a wave of magical force towards the archdemon, with heat and light and an almost divine fury. Camven reeled back from the blast, as well as the other Wardens that had been gathered around, attempting to maul the beast.  
Aemilia had acted with blind faith in Isera’s words. Once, that would have been impossible. Now, it may end the Blight.  
Isera screamed and thrust her broken blade up, finding the weakness and passing up, through, past, into the beast itself.  
Its cry of rage left Isera deafened besides an eerie ringing in her ears – it was as if the world had been muted to her. Everything that was was everything that she could see: the great dragon convulsing, writhing in response to her strike, one of its legs giving out, and then another. Isera closed her eyes and waited for it to crush her.  
A hand seized hers and dragged her out of the way just as the beast made the ground shudder with inconceivable force as it collapsed. Isera’s eyes cracked open – there was Camven, holding her in his arms, his lips moving, forming words that she could not hear.  
The dragon was on the ground but shaking and thrashing, its limbs moving with aimless speed and force – Isera watched as the throes crumpled one Warden, then another, then another.  
Dumat, the archdemon, lay still very suddenly.  
Isera was overtaken by an immense calmness as brightness flashed in her vision: a light from the archdemon, shooting up into the sky, forming a whirling wind almost comparable to a hurricane around them on the ground. The winds became impossible, throwing Isera and Camven apart as whatever the light was, whatever this whole experience was, cast the world in wonder.  
Isera ended up lying beside the archdemon, able to see its motionless, grotesque face, twisted and snarling but now utterly lifeless.  
Something indescribable and impossible filled her up as if to burst.  
Isera and the archdemon lay side by side, staring at each other with glassy eyes, as the darkspawn horde broke and ran, and the sun came out – a bitter pathetic fallacy as Camven staggered towards his sister and wept.


	2. -208 Ancient, somewhere in the forest south of Weisshaupt

Camven was worse.  
When he woke up, clumps of dark hair clung to his pillow: he was even paler and his veins stood out almost black against his skin. His waking itself was alarming; he started alert, coughing violently, shaking from head to toe, drawing in shuddering breaths with panic in his eyes before swallowing and settling back down.  
Nehel crawled towards Camven as he shivered and gathered him in his arms. Camven curled up, resting his head in Nehel’s lap with a sigh.  
Isera didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything, and brooded over their campfire, slowly tying up her boots, watching her brother and his lover huddle together against the cold and the dark and the shadows that moved deceptively past the glow of the flames. Weary as she was, Isera had stopped jumping at every one.  
How many days had it been? Weeks?  
It couldn’t have been weeks. Camven had been deteriorating extraordinarily fast – he wouldn’t have made it weeks.  
Isera bit her lip. ‘He won’t make it weeks. How are we measuring the time that he has left? Days? Hours?’ She should feel sad, shouldn’t she? Her brother was dying. ‘Minutes?’  
Camven was stricken by another round of coughs and Nehel had to turn his face away. They didn’t know how the taint spread so they were being careful… maybe they should have left him. If they truly wanted to be careful…  
Isera swallowed. ‘I should feel sad, shouldn’t I?’  
Morning was sluggish and crawled across the sky laboriously, the weak orange filtering through the leaves, brushing the skin of Isera’s face with reluctant warmth. She watched it unfurl as Camven dozed fitfully in Nehel’s arms, until she could see the sun above them and stood, grasping her staff and hanging it from her back. “It’s time we head out,” she told the others, strangely feeling nothing as Nehel turned imploring eyes on her.  
“Please, just a little longer,” he begged. “Camven needs to rest before we move again.”  
“He’s been resting all night,” Isera snapped.  
“He’s sick,” Nehel scowled.  
“He’s dying,” Isera replied. “And we’ll die too if we don’t get out of here sooner rather than later. The darkspawn are coming. Can’t you feel it? They’re sickening the forest.”  
“I can,” Nehel answered sadly. “But, please. He can’t keep moving at this pace.”  
“Neither can we if we want to make it out of here.” Isera sighed. “Come on; you’re going to have to carry most of the stuff.”  
Nehel gently removed Camven’s head from his lap and rested it against the ground. “Why?”  
“Because I’m carrying Camven.” Isera crouched down and gathered her brother in her arms before balancing him across her shoulders. She’d already packed up most of what little they had managed to carry with them so Nehel only had to swiftly roll up Camven’s bedroll and pick up all the packs, pursuing Isera into the trees.  
‘Camven used to be heavier than this.’ Isera noted the lightness of Camven’s fragile frame. His bones seemed to jam awkwardly against her; he felt like a thin sack of sharp parts, and his almost translucent skin was not helping matters. Isera saw his slack face hanging behind her left shoulder, so familiar and yet so strange, cast in darkness, the cheekbones like blades beneath hollow eyes.  
He was moaning in his sleep, his eyelids flickering and his lips moving without forming words.  
“Camven,” Isera whispered, the shallowest pang of hurt striking her. She had become numb. Was it wearing off?  
Camven gasped and his eyes sprang open. They were grey. They weren’t grey before. “Isera,” he cried.  
“I’m here,” Isera answered awkwardly.  
“It hurts, Isera, it hurts,” he whimpered. “I can feel it inside, like it’s writhing...”  
Isera sniffed. “I don’t know what to tell you, Camven. It’s not looking good.”  
Camven shivered. “You should have left me behind.”  
Nehel stumbled forwards and slipped his hands into Camven’s. “Never,” he insisted.  
Camven just exhaled weakly and said no more.  
Nehel fell behind again, his head drooping against his chest as Camven’s hand went limp. Isera watched Camven’s chest rise and fall falteringly.  
‘Seconds?’  
Isera staggered suddenly, not having seen a root in her path, and struggled to balance Camven across her shoulders as she nearly fell. He didn’t even respond to this, his limbs flailing wildly. Nehel leaped forwards, catching Camven as he nearly slipped to the ground, cupping Camven’s head in his hand. “Sorry!” Isera cried. “I should have been looking where I was going.”  
Nehel’s hand lingered on Camven’s hair as Isera reclaimed her balance. “Do you want me to carry him?”  
Isera couldn’t help but want him to; she didn’t want to have to behold Camven’s sorry state any longer than she had to. She opened her mouth to offer assent when she froze. “Do you hear that?” she whispered.  
Nehel’s eyes widened and he looked around frantically, scanning the looming trees around them. His breath seemed impossibly loud.  
There was a roar, and then there was a genlock.  
Isera reeled back clumsily, the weight of Camven on her back making her unbalanced. Nehel dropped their packs and ripped his shield from his back, rising it to intercept the falling mace that the genlock wielded. It was monstrous, its face that of a twisted beast, tusks dripping saliva, its armour ripped and bloody.  
Nehel drew his sword as he blocked again, his shield splintering violently under the brute force of the strike. He swung furiously at the genlock, burying his sword in its neck, red weakly splurging down its shoulder. It gurgled but swung its mace again, grinding it up into where Nehel’s stomach was – or would have been if Nehel hadn’t spun out of the way in time, panting.  
Isera had barely even registered this as it had unfolded but now threw flame at the genlock charging at Nehel, causing it to roar in fury but not slow down. She tried to move her hands to form a slowing spell, but Camven’s weight against her lumbered her. Guiltily, she took him off her shoulders and lay him on the ground. He was barely even moving any more, but she had to ignore it to deal with helping Nehel. Freed up, she took her staff from her back, feeling more confident with the familiar feel of it against her palm, and she began to manipulate the forces around the genlock as it pounded Nehel mercilessly, his arm gradually buckling as his shield was wrecked, now barely more than splinters hanging off his arm. The genlock slowed, its limbs moving as if through honey, and Nehel gasped in relief before driving his sword into it, finding a crook in its armour and exploiting it brutally, his sword passing straight through it with a gruesome rip, splattering blood over Nehel’s face. He drew back in disgust, his sword leaving its flesh with another spurt of blood, red as if it were just normal blood, but carrying poison. The poison that was killing Camven.  
Isera relaxed. “We did it.”  
Nehel nodded, face stern and pinched as he moved to sheath his sword.  
“Don’t let it get away!” They were startled by a voice carried through the trees.  
“Where did it go?” another shouted in reply, as Isera and Nehel heard rustling and snapping as what sounded like several people tore their way through the forest.  
“This way?” A third.  
Isera moved towards Camven, hovering protectively over him, her staff in her hand, lightning buzzing at the tips of her fingers. Nehel tossed his ruined shield aside and held his sword in both hands, clearly trying to look brave even though his hands were trembling.  
The second voice cried out and drew closer very quickly, punctuating the sound of the destruction of undergrowth by short cries of pain. A dwarf rolled into the sight of Isera and Nehel, picking himself up blearily, knocking a fist against the side of his head.  
“Dwyron?” the first voice called out. “Are you okay?”  
The dwarf cleared his throat. “I think...” He saw the two elves standing beside the pale body on the ground. “...so.”  
“Dwy?”  
“Get over here!” Dwyron yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth. “We’ve got ourselves one dead genlock!” He was red-faced and had smile lines creasing his face like used fabric, green eyes twinkling under a bushy bench of brown eyebrow that was covering more of his forehead than bare skin was. “Hello, strangers!” he greeted heartily, placing his hands on his hips and rolling his feet back and forth. “The name’s Dwyron Godic! And you are?”  
Isera stared at him, wide-eyed, not sure what to do about this strange dwarf in the forest. She had barely thought of a single word to say when a human woman emerged from the bushes behind him, leaves caught in her blonde hair. She brushed them out as she left the dense cover of the vegetation, gathering her hair in a bun on top of her head, eyes finding the elves, regarding them cautiously. “Greetings,” she said, scanning them with practised eyes that caught Isera’s staff at once, then evaluated the quality of their armour and weapons, then took in the dead genlock pumping blood pathetically into the dirt, and then moved to the doll-like form of Camven laying between the gnarled roots of a tree. She saw the veins, knew the symptoms at once. “Your friend has the taint,” she noted.  
“We know,” Nehel growled.  
Dwyron’s lips parted when he saw Camven. “He won’t make it much longer.”  
Nehel’s lip was trembling. He had been managing to not think about that so much, and instead just focusing on surviving now. But it was true. He looked at Camven. He wouldn’t live beyond the week, at the most, and that was only with medical attention.  
A third person arrived in the clearing, another human who looked like the other, with the same blond hair and fine features. His eyebrows shot up when he saw the ragged group of elves shivering there. He hesitated before saying “Hello...” and fingering his bow, not sure what his comrades were doing about this interjection to their business.  
“Could we get them to Weisshaupt?” Dwyron asked the first human.  
She frowned. “You’re not suggesting-”  
“It could save his life.”  
“What are you talking about?” Isera demanded, the energy dancing around her fingers solidifying into a ball of lightning that she was ready to hurl at a moment’s notice. “Who are you people?”  
Dwyron puffed his chest out. “We,” he announced, “are Grey Wardens.”  
“Technically, you aren’t one yet,” the first human told him.  
Dwyron waved a hand. “Details, details.” He grinned. “These are my fellows, Lavinia and Dominik Hoffmann.” He indicated to each human in turn, first to the woman to his right and then the man to his left.  
“Grey Wardens?” Nehel exclaimed, cutting them all off. “You… you can survive the taint, can’t you?”  
“We can,” Lavinia answered, though she didn’t sound particularly happy about it.  
Nehel dropped to his knees. “Could you… would you be able to save him?” he asked, tears pricking his eyes as he pointed a shaking finger at Camven’s shadowed form nestled amongst the roots.  
“He looks far gone,” Lavinia pointed out, stiff, Nehel’s threatening to weep unsettling her. Still, she picked her way forwards and peered at Camven. Isera thought about stopping her, but couldn’t help but wonder what exactly it was that they had to lose. Camven was going to die.  
“How bad is it?” Isera asked, for want of something better to say.  
Lavinia grimaced. “Bad,” she answered briefly, stepping away again. “Even if he makes it to Weisshaupt, he’ll be in no shape to survive the Joining.”  
“Is it possible? Even slightly?” Nehel’s eyes were desperate, wide and shockingly blue.  
Dominik glanced at Lavinia before saying “Slightly.”  
Nehel’s breath was coming in gasps. “Can we come with you? Try to save him?”  
Lavinia was frowning. “He’ll slow us down,” she muttered.  
“We could save a man’s life,” Dominik whispered back. “Isn’t that the whole point of the Grey Wardens? To save people?”  
“How do we even know who they are? They could be spies-”  
“Spies? Belonging to who, the darkspawn?” He blanched at Lavinia’s glare. “I mean...”  
“You’ve got to stop listening to your sister all the time,” Dwyron said loudly, and threw Camven across his back, looking back at the Hoffmann siblings expectantly. “Let’s go, then,” he urged.  
Isera didn’t really know what to do, so just gathered up her and Camven’s packs as Nehel grabbed his, and she dived after Dwyron; Nehel, Lavinia and Dominik fell into formation behind them.  
“How far is it to Weisshaupt?” Isera called forwards.  
“Apparently about a day. We should be able to see it when the forest breaks.”  
Isera nodded, relieved.  
“So, I didn’t ask your names,” Dwyron called back over his shoulder.  
Isera looked up. “I’m Isera,” she replied, simply. “You’re carrying my brother Camven. And that was Nehel.” Nehel, battling his way through thistles a way back, hadn’t heard Dwyron.  
“Lovely to meet you,” Dwyron said, “though I wish it were under better circumstances. What are you three doing out here anyway?”  
“Running away from the darkspawn,” Isera said. It wasn’t exactly a lie.  
Dwyron nodded. “So was I. I used to live in Kal-Sharok, Mining Caste, but my family and I left when it was attacked. And here I am!” He laughed, for some reason. “On my way to Grey Warden-hood! How exciting!”  
“I suppose it must be,” Isera agreed.  
“How much do you know about the Grey Wardens?” Dwyron asked.  
Isera shrugged. “Not much, I guess. I know that they can survive the taint and are trying to stop the darkspawn, but,” – she hesitated, before adding – “they don’t seem to be doing a very good job of it, from where I’m standing.”  
Dwyron laughed. He seemed to enjoy that. “Must seem that way. But we’re trying.”  
Dwyron and Isera settled into silence, hearing Lavinia and Dominik bickering about something trivial behind them, Nehel moving with greater urgency than he had before, energised by hope.  
“Lavinia said you weren’t a Grey Warden yet?” Isera asked.  
“Ah, no. There’s some sort of Joining ritual.” Dwyron snorted. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’ll be fine. And then, you’re a Grey Warden!”  
“You don’t know what it entails?”  
“I don’t need to! I can take anything!”  
“It’s got to be what lets the Wardens survive the taint, hasn’t it?” Isera wondered aloud, imagining what it could possibly be. She had long wondered this. The Grey Wardens had been founded decades before she was born, but their immunity to the taint was more recent, and also a closely guarded secret. But why was it a secret? Surely it would be better if everyone could survive the taint…  
“What are you thinking so hard about?” Dwyron asked, snapping Isera to attention.  
“Oh, sorry,” Isera apologised quickly. “I was miles away.”  
Dwyron chuckled.  
They walked in silence a while longer, Dominik and Lavinia still talking in the distance, Nehel within Isera’s sight behind her. They were travelling in a spaced out line, trekking unevenly through the trees, Dwyron clearing the path. Isera noticed immediately when they left the treeline, and she looked up. “The Anderfels.” The landscape spun out majestically before her, the forest falling abruptly away, a grey smudge on the horizon atop a jagged butte – the smudge might just be Weisshaupt. She and Camven had talked about coming west for so long to escape from the Tevinter Imperium that it felt strange to know that they had made it. It should be happy. It should be euphoric. But it wasn’t. “Camven...” Isera looked to her brother hanging limply across Dwyron’s shoulders. “We made it,” she muttered, turning her eyes down, watching the grass crumple under her boots, her robes catching on the ground. Her skin was covered in a thousand scratches and bruises, so many that she could barely remember where a single one had come from, accumulated over so long on the run.  
And then, what, a few days ago? Then the darkspawn found them.  
“So, you and your brother here...” Dwyron began.  
Isera’s eyebrows knotted together, making a bench almost to compete with Dwyron’s as she awaited his question. “Yes?”  
“You have Tevinter slave markings,” he pointed out, “but your friend Nehel doesn’t.”  
Isera breathed. “Yes?”  
Dwyron didn’t say anything else straight away, and Isera just beheld the tattoos wreathing around Camven’s eyes and down his cheeks and neck, the testament to their lives before. Isera had no intention of talking about it. She didn’t want Dwyron to ask. She didn’t want anyone to ask. Even Nehel didn’t know everything.  
Dwyron stopped walking and turned to look at Isera, smiling. “You know what I think?”  
Isera drew to an abrupt halt in order to not bump into him. “What?”  
Dwyron’s eyes disappeared as his face crinkled into a massive smile. “I think you guys will make great Grey Wardens!”  
Isera started. “I… never said I wanted to be a Grey Warden,” she stammered.  
Dwyron’s face crinkled even further: he looked like a sheet of crumpled parchment. “No,” he laughed. “You didn’t.”


	3. -208 Ancient, Weisshaupt Fortress, the Fade

Once again, Aemilia was dreaming.  
The Fade had become familiar here because Aemilia had entered so many times, roving deep into the memories and dreams of a thousand thousand spirits and dreamers and travellers of the Fade. Aemilia snatched at fragments, pieces, confusing shards and senseless remnants, looking for truths and information that one needed the Fade to discover.  
It was not a common field of study, but even among the spheres in which it was known, most mages explored the present and past. They didn’t see the full scope. The Fade was everything, everywhere, at every time. Time moved impossibly in the Fade. It wasn’t common, but occasionally, on those beautiful occasions, Aemilia found a piece of the future, something yet to come.  
And today, there was one. Aemilia felt it, an unfamiliar tinge as she delved into fresh corners. Weisshaupt was excellent for these memories, Aemilia had discovered, momentous things happening here far in the future, shockwaves of the events shuddering backwards through the ages.  
This memory manifested itself as a softly glowing chest, simple but large, with a thick metal lock securing the lid down. Aemilia dropped to a crouch, approaching it slowly, remembering the words of her teachers, so long ago. ‘Treat the memories like cats,’ Faustus had told her, his voice echoing in the gracious halls of Aemilia’s school. ‘Take it slow and careful.’  
Aemilia stuck her tongue out in concentration as she crept forwards, her feet soundless against the springy ground. This part of the Fade looked like a meadow, with rolling hills, edged by brooding forest. Aemilia had already come far from where she had entered, tracing a new path through the world of spirits, bending trees and obstacles out of the way with the magic of the dreamers.  
The chest was pulsing unevenly, flickering like a flame.  
Aemilia held her breath as she neared it, terrified of it fleeing before her eyes. It was so clear – such clarity she had rarely seen. What memories did it hold?  
Her hand brushed it, and images flooded her vision.  
An elf stood outside Weisshaupt; it was still Weisshaupt, but it was unfamiliar, clearly modified and improved, exhibiting rebuilt sections with architecture that Aemilia had never seen. The elf was taller than most, her ears graciously pointed, hung around by hair lit gold by the setting sun. She stared up at Weisshaupt, squinting.  
A red-haired woman walked up behind her. “Are you all right?” she asked, her voice struck by a lilting accent.  
“I’m fine,” the elf replied, looking at the woman and smiling. “Just comparing Weisshaupt to how it looked in the Fade.”  
“In the Fade?”  
“With Sloth. In the Circle Tower.”  
Aemilia understood the words, but didn’t understand the rest, and just let the memory wash over her despite her lack of comprehension.  
“That’s what Sloth gave you as your dream?”  
The elf nodded. “Duncan was there, telling me that the Blight was over and everything was fine. I guess I just like getting attacked by dragons too much,” she laughed.  
“It is impressive, isn’t it? I have heard so many stories of this place.” The woman’s eyes were gleaming with excitement. “So many tales, so much history! I have to learn it all!”  
The elf smiled wistfully and took the woman’s hand. A man came up behind them, carrying the chest that Aemilia had found in the Fade. “Where do you want this?” he asked, breathless.  
The elf jumped. “Oh, sorry!” She headed towards him and took the chest from him, blushing. “Shouldn’t be burdening you with my stuff longer than necessary.”  
Another elf, male this time, and smirking devilishly, seemed to appear behind the man, running a teasing finger along the man’s collarbone. “I could burden you with mine instead,” he whispered.  
The man turned the approximate colour of a tomato and scurried away.  
“You need to stop freaking everyone out, Zevran,” the first elf scolded.  
Zevran chuckled. “But I am so good at it,” he shrugged. “And you love it, Cairenn.”  
Cairenn rolled her eyes but was smiling. “Come on, let’s go inside. The Wardens should be waiting to meet us. I shouldn’t imagine we’ll be here for that long: a couple of weeks, maybe.”  
“And where are my insatiable ladies planning to drag me next?” Zevran asked huskily.  
Cairenn pouted. “Leliana? Where do you think we should go next?”  
The red-haired woman’s eyes sparkled. “Val Royeaux. We didn’t get to visit it on our way north.”  
“Ah, I have heard such tales of Val Royeaux!” Zevran exclaimed, swinging his arms wide. “The city, the women, the men!” His laughter was closer to a cackle. “What an excellent idea!”  
Cairenn chuckled. “All right, then. Val Royeaux. First, though, we have to see what the Wardens want with me.”  
“To congratulate you on killing the archdemon?” Leliana suggested.  
“To demand how you escaped death through your wily, wily ways?” Zevran countered. He was never not smirking.  
Cairenn blew out her cheeks. “Probably both.” She adjusted her chest against herself, grunting as it nearly slipped through her fingers. Leliana caught the end of it.   
“What have you got in there?” Zevran leaned forwards, eyes teasing. “Something dirty?”  
Leliana avoided eye contact with the flirty elf as Cairenn shook her head. “Something dangerous,” she replied.  
“Aemilia!”  
Aemilia didn’t notice the voice at first, so wrapped up was she in watching the incredible memory, but the fifth time it reached her she was dragged from her sleep, and woke up with a startled cry to see Kaeso leaning over her, shaking her by her shoulders.  
“Aemilia!” he drew back when he heard her cry and saw her eyes spring open. “You’re needed.”  
“Did it have to be now?” she demanded, exasperated. “It was such a wonderful memory...” She groaned. “I’ll never find one so clear again.”  
Kaeso’s expression was dubious. “What was it?”  
“I don’t know. It was from the future, some time far away. These memories are hazardous due to a distinct lack of context.” She rose from her bed and began to pace. “But – oh my! There was an elf called Cairenn. Leliana said that she had killed the archdemon!” Aemilia seized Kaeso and shook him excitedly. “You don’t think – perhaps – that Cairenn was a Warden who killed the archdemon? But – it was so far in the future – how long does the Blight last?” Aemilia’s shoulders slumped. “There is so much that I must find out. If only I could look it up.”  
“Aemilia,” Kaeso interrupted. “You’re still needed.”  
“Their ‘need’ may have prevented me finding out how this Blight ends, but if you must insist.” She pulled on shoes and an outer robe, having fallen asleep in her dress from the day before. “What is this about? Who needs me?”  
“The First Warden requested your presence in the hall. I didn’t ask why.”  
“Of course you didn’t, Kaeso.” Aemilia brushed herself down and patted her head in a weak attempt to flatten her wildly curly hair. “I’ll be off, then.”  
“I was told to accompany you,” Kaeso said.  
“If you must.” Aemilia didn’t dislike Kaeso, just found him exasperating. The man never stopped to see anything beyond his own little world. And his world was so little.  
She took the stairs down from the mages’ tower of Weisshaupt three at a time; the mages of the Order had a separate residence within the fortress, equipped with libraries, safe areas to cast spells and various teaching rooms and laboratories.  
Aemilia reached the hall and walked in without so much as an announcing knock, throwing the doors wide. She knew her place, and she didn’t have to knock.  
“Chamberlain,” the First Warden greeted. First Warden Andri Rapace was a tall man, formidably built, with muscles moving like taut knots under tanned skin. His dark hair was often – generally while fighting – loosely tied back from his face, but today it was slicked back, curling back around his ears. “I hope you weren’t too busy.”  
“Oh no, just potentially discovering how this Blight upon the land will end.” Aemilia raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “But of course, if there’s something more important...”  
“A man needs to undertake the Joining to survive,” Andri answered sternly.  
Aemilia blinked and looked around the hall properly. It was actually quite small and there was no throne as in a palace; Andri was not even seated, and instead merely stood at the top of a very short flight of stairs. This slight elevation was all that indicated his status, and Aemilia usually stood next to him. Rank mattered less in the Wardens than it seemed to everywhere else, which suited Aemilia fine. If they cared about race or class, then the Order would barely have enough people to clean Weisshaupt on a regular basis. Aemilia would still be here, of course.  
She spotted the elf with the taint as soon as she laid eyes on him, drawing staggered breaths, his eyes fluttering open and closed but clearly dead to the world. She had never seen anyone so far gone but still both alive and not a ghoul; the fact that he was still both breathing and not seeking out the darkspawn might as well have been a miracle. She also noted the slave tattoos. They muddied her thoughts and irritated her, because it meant that she wasn’t sure how much of her reluctance was based on logical progression and how much was born from her instinctive internal recoil at the sight of a slave.  
Being an altus from Tevinter was complicated everywhere that wasn’t the noble halls of Tevinter cities, like Qarinus or Minrathous, both places that Aemilia had studied before joining the Wardens.  
She took a few steps closer to Andri, observing the bedraggled group of elves, two others crouching beside their blighted friend. Aemilia recognised Lavinia and Dominik, who stood at the back of the hall, both looking stern. She assumed that the dwarf beside them was Dwyron Godic, the recruit that they had sent forwards word of finding during their excursion. Their trip was largely in the interest of recruitment, but they had reported there being few disposable men and women in fighting conditions left in the Anderfels or most of the regions south. The dwarves of Kal-Sharok were dug in, desperate for every warrior that they could get their hands on; the sight of recruiting Grey Wardens was no sign of hope but rather an indicator that they would soon have fewer men to fight the darkspawn besieging them. “So we’re going to hand it out, then?” she asked, trying not to sound as dubious as she felt. Her voice was muted, and their conversation was only for their ears. “He looks like he’ll die either way.”  
Andri frowned. “Precisely. So isn’t it worth a shot? We need every Warden. All of Thedas needs every Warden. How long has this Blight lasted now?” He sighed. “I know we know nothing of him; for all we know, he’s a knock-kneed weakling who can barely tell the pommel of a sword from the pointy end. But we need every single Warden we can find.”  
Aemilia closed her eyes, took a breath, and opened them again. “We have enough treated blood for maybe two Joinings, at best. I’ll get the mages producing more, but we’ll needing more basic darkspawn blood soon enough, Andri. This research into making the Joining safer is depleting our resources quickly.”  
“Would you prefer more people to die?” Andri gave her a baffled, almost appalled, look. “Just get the blood. We have a shot at saving this man. I would take it.”  
“Do you want enough for two?” Aemilia asked.  
“Why not? Dwyron here can test his mettle against the blood as well.” He raised his voice, addressing the hall. “Dwyron, prepare yourself. Your Joining will proceed forthwith, along with that of this poor man.” He hesitated, then addressed the two elves hovering over their friend softly. “What is his name? We need to know, to carve it into our memorials should he not make it.”  
The male elf stared at him with wide eyes. “You would honour him like that?”  
Andri bowed his head respectfully. “We would. Every sacrifice is celebrated here.”  
The female’s voice was raspy, clearly disused, when she spoke. “His name is Camven Eloriel.”  
Aemilia watched this, unsure what to do.  
“Aemilia!” Andri snapped, startling her to attention. “We need to have the Joining, if you wouldn’t mind.”  
Aemilia’s nose wrinkled as she raced from the hall, down into the vaults, where they kept the treated darkspawn blood that they used for Joinings. She mixed it up with the normal stuff in the designated amounts, her stomach roiling. “Okay, fine, the Wardens respect everyone,” she muttered to herself as she worked. “But a half-dead, ex-slave elf who hasn’t even agreed to the Joining should hardly get his name on the memorials.” She glanced up to where the great stones were, pressed against the wall, hundreds of neat names running down their surfaces. Men and woman of honour, of glory. And there, near the bottom, in a place that Aemilia’s eyes found almost without her telling them to, was the name Velia Quentin.  
Aemilia bristled, returning to her work. “That elf deserves to get his name on here as much as he deserves to be free,” she spat, and then she was finished, carrying the completed chalice with just enough blood for two Joinings sitting placidly within, as if it were harmless.  
She re-entered the hall to see the blighted elf gasping and wriggling on the floor, his veins sticking out from his skin like bulging rope. The other two held him down, the male one crying silent tears, the female one shuddering.  
‘Don’t cry now – he’ll die soon enough anyway. Cry then. And then leave us alone.’  
Andri almost tackled Aemilia as he took the blood from her, bending over the elf.  
“That’s blood,” the female observed, recoiling.  
“I would explain,” Andri apologised, “but he’ll become a ghoul if we don’t do this soon.”  
The female was pulling a face but let Andri position the chalice by the blighted elf’s mouth. The male one just kept crying silently.  
The blood poured into the blighted elf’s mouth. He almost spat it out again - ‘waste of my time’ - but Andri clamped a hand over his mouth and he swallowed it down.  
The hall was deathly quiet when the blighted elf’s energy dissipated on the breeze and he collapsed, head lolling. The male one clapped his hands over his mouth and waited, frozen, a weeping statue. The female one fell backwards into a sitting position, wrapping her arms around her knees.  
The blighted elf didn’t stir for an incredibly long time, a pained eternity. Aemilia opened her mouth to proclaim him dead.  
He gasped and jerked to life, the black veins pulling back from his skin, which regained some semblance of colour as he coughed and retched, beating an open hand against the stone floor. He almost vomited but clutched his stomach and held it down, his forehead pressing on the flagging. He breathed and breathed and breathed, savouring every breath as it flooded in and out of his lungs. After a second eternity, he sat straight, looking around him. The male one cried out with joy and wrapped his arms around the blighted one - ‘although I suppose it’s “Warden” now’ - clutching him as if afraid he might disappear if he let him go.  
“Nehel!” the elf Warden croaked. “It’s so good to see you-” His voice broke and he buried his face in the male one’s shoulder.  
The female one slumped, falling backwards on the ground, unconscious. Dominik, who had watched all of this in solemn silence, rushed forwards to help, looking her up and down. “I think she’s just tired,” he decided, before retreating, not sure what to do with himself.  
Neither was Aemilia. She watched as the elf Warden turned around and saw the female one sleeping on the floor; he gathered her up in his arms, sobbing, the male one clearly still afraid to not be touching him as he had linked their arms together.  
‘Their names are Camven and Nehel. I suppose I will have to call them by their names now.’ Aemilia didn’t know the name of the female, but she was clearly a mage. Still, the slave tattoos made Aemilia turn her nose up and she met Andri’s eyes across the room where he was wiping the chalice clean and calling Dwyron over to talk, or drink and become a Grey Warden or die. “Can I go?” she asked.  
Andri nodded, and Aemilia made a brisk exit, wondering who the person that she hated most in that room was, and whether or not it was herself.


	4. -208 Ancient, Weisshaupt Fortress, Sparring Ring

“By the Stone, when do you give up?” Mili bellowed, thumping her sword and shield together as Lavinia came at her again. “You’re worse than the darkspawn!”  
Lavinia laughed as her wooden greatsword thudded against Mili’s practise shield, jumping back as Mili’s wooden blade came sweeping down at her legs. “A thousand times!” she agreed, dodging Mili’s shield bash and spying an opening, thumping her playfully in the stomach. Mili chuckled as she staggered backwards, face flushed and sweating but beaming, having laughed so hard that her face was hurting after ten minutes of solid pounding each other but loving it all the same. Lavinia was her favourite sparring partner by far, and even despite Lavinia’s clear restlessness that day, the sparring was still good.  
“I hear you’ve brought us two new Grey Wardens,” Mili said as she slammed into Lavinia’s shoulder with the pommel of her sword. “A dwarf and an elf?”  
“We found the dwarf,” Lavinia replied, “but the elves found us.”  
“How many elves are there?”  
“Three.” Lavinia swept Mili’s legs out from under her with the flat of her blade; Mili grunted and nearly collapsed but slammed her sword into the ground and reclaimed her footing. The boss of her shield collided with Lavinia’s face, such that Lavinia spat out some blood before speaking again. “The one that’s already taken the Joining was blighted. He looked too far gone to even survive, but somehow...”  
“Great Ancestors, did I knock a tooth out?” Mili asked guiltily, backing away.  
Lavinia shook her head. “I just bit my tongue.” Mili grinned and pressed back on the offensive. “Anyway, I don’t even know if the other two elves are going to undertake the Joining, but I don’t think either of them will want to leave their friend Camven.”  
“That’s the new Warden’s name? Camven?”  
“Camven Eloriel,” Lavinia nodded. “And the dwarf is called Dwyron Godic.”  
“Those are good names,” Mili said.  
Lavinia cocked her head. “And what exactly are the qualifications of a good name? Is my name a good name?”  
Mili shrugged. “I just like names.” Her eyes drifted over Lavinia’s shoulder and she relented in her attack. “Hello?”  
Lavinia turned around to see the female elf hovering at the doorway to the cellar where the sparring ring was. She was dark-skinned, with dark hair pulled back from her face in dozens of tight braids. She and Camven looked startlingly similar, except the differences in the slave tattoos winding around their features; hers were softer and paler, while Camven’s were jagged and harsh, as if they had been carved into his face with a scalpel. “Hello,” she said quietly. “Sorry, am I interrupting?”  
“Not particularly,” Mili said, slinking out of the sparring ring, wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. “We were about done. I’m Mili!” She was about to stick her hand out for the elf to shake but then realised how sweaty it was and wiped it against her trousers, forgetting the handshake.  
“Isera.”  
Mili dumped her sword and shield on one side of the ring. “Do you need something?”  
“I was just looking for… anyone. This place is so empty.”  
Mili laughed. “That it is. Most of the Wardens are out, you know, killing darkspawn.”  
“I see. That’s good, I suppose.”  
Mili spied the staff on Isera’s back. “You’re a mage.”  
“Yes?”  
“But a slave?” Mili looked confused.  
Isera frowned. “Tevinter doesn’t care who they enslave as long as they’re enslaved,” she said. She was strangely emotionless; her tone was carefully level, and only her reluctance to meet anyone’s eyes said that she was hurting.  
Mili hesitated a moment before she jumped forwards and wrapped an arm around Isera’s waist – too short to reach her shoulders – causing Isera to bite her lip, unsure what to do. “I’ll show you around,” Mili said happily. “Want to come, Lavinia?”  
Lavinia shook her head. “I’m going to wash. It’s been a long few weeks.”  
Mili bowed her head in assent as she led Isera from the room.  
Lavinia tossed her practise sword to one side, and, for some reason, sank to the ground, wrapping her arms around her legs and resting her chin on her knees. “It’s been a long few weeks,” she said again, and sat there for half an hour, staring at the dust catching on the rays from the windows high up on the wall, before she finally rose and headed for the bathrooms.  
Mili showed Isera around with a determination of thoroughness that was almost inspiring to behold, making sure that she remembered where things were and then deciding to entertain her with fun anecdotes every once in a while, until Isera knew the frontal foyer, the hall leading directly off that, the placing of the mage’s tower on the eastern side, the training rooms and vaults in the cellars beneath the fortress, the main dormitory space on the western side, and the main tower positioned over the hall, with various offices, conference rooms and suites within. Isera didn’t remember it all in precise detail, but Mili was informative and direct, and her bearings improved significantly over the course of the tour. After they had covered most every inch of the fortress, including the interior courtyards and agricultural plots of land out the back, Mili led Isera to the front courtyard just within the walls, leading to the foyer and the hall, where they could look up at the winding structure of the main tower and the considerably smaller mage’s tower on their left. “What do you think?” she asked, waving a hand up at Weisshaupt.  
Isera smiled. “It’s impressive,” she admitted. “There’s so much of it… but there’s still barely anyone here, which makes it sad.”  
Mili noticed a frown crease her brow and raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”  
“The Fade is restless here,” Isera said, dreamily waving a hand before herself as it testing the air. “Like it’s… like it’s waiting for something. Or… trying to tell us something?”  
Mili just shrugged. “Well, dwarves don’t dream, so I can’t even comprehend all that,” she replied brightly.  
“I’d heard that,” Isera answered, “but I’d never met a dwarf before.”  
“Really? Never?”  
“A-apparently they don’t have any in Vyrantium.” Isera pressed her index fingertips together, staring at the floor. “Not much other than slaves and mages there.”  
“There are still slaves and mages here,” Mili told her. “Tevinter reconquered the Anderfels centuries ago. Weisshaupt is just a little separate from everywhere else.”  
“I know that.”  
Mili and Isera just looked up at Weisshaupt together for a moment, grey clouds streaking messily across the sky.  
“So what are you going to do now?”  
“You’re asking whether or not I’m going to stay.”  
“We always need more Grey Wardens.”  
Isera chewed on the inside of her lip. “Dwyron and Camven were both fine, but the First Warden talked about if Camven would survive or not. And… Grey Wardens only recruit strong people, right? So, the Joining. The darkspawn blood drinking. It can be fatal, can’t it?”  
Mili’s eyes were approving. “You’re clever.”  
“I listen,” Isera corrected. Her eyelids flickered. “Nehel will stay. He would never leave Camven. And he’ll be so determined to stay with Camven that there’s no way he’d die.”  
“But you have doubts?”  
“Of course I have doubts!” Isera looked very surprised by her own outburst of emotion and pressed a hand against her mouth. “I mean… I don’t...” She just shook her head and said nothing more.  
Mili just let Isera think, chewing the inside of her mouth as if trying to gnaw through it, while Mili pulled her coat closer around her, a chill wind sifting through the air.  
Isera raised her hands as if in surrender. “I haven’t even been recruited into the Grey Wardens, so this conversation is entirely academic,” she said eventually.  
“If that makes you feel better. You’ll have to talk with Andri whatever you decide; he’ll help you out.”  
“He’d help out a non-Grey Warden ex-slave elf?” Isera asked dubiously.  
“He’d help anyone. That’s why he’s a Grey Warden.” Mili beamed at her.  
Isera looked at the grinning dwarf. Her hair was a mane of dirty blonde flopping down over her forehead and her eyes were a shocking blue. But behind her features there was an honesty, a sincerity, that Isera couldn’t help but trust. She hesitated. “I’ll think about it,” she said.  
Mili grinned.


	5. -208 Ancient, Weisshaupt Fortress, Mage’s Tower

Aemilia paced up and down, frantically taking notes, scratching the bottom of her mind so that she could write exactly what it was that she had seen. “‘Duncan was there, telling me that… the Blight was over and everything was fine. I guess I just...’ ah… shit.” She scowled, slamming her paper down on her desk. “‘I guess I just… like getting attacked by dragons too much?’ That’s it!” She scribbled it down, scanning down her transcript, saying it over aloud, 80% sure that it was correct. She kept working, desperately recalling the memory, until she had it all written down. It didn’t make any more sense, but at least she could go over it again.  
“‘To congratulate you on killing the archdemon?’ ‘To demand how you escaped death using your wily, wily ways?’” She frowned, pondering. “‘How you escaped death’? So that’ll be about how the archdemon soul should – theoretically – enter a Grey Warden if they slay it? That’s why we’re here, after all. But…” Aemilia’s face creased up as she thought. “Cairenn… she didn’t die? Did someone else die? Another Warden? Or did no one die?” She threw her quill across the room in exasperation. “If only I could ask! I’m trying to save the world here!” She sat on her bed, burying her head in her hands. “This is all I can do, and I can’t even do it!” She pressed her fingertips together. “I’ve got to find another memory. I have to.” She laid down, but she couldn’t sleep, worries chasing themselves around her mind. “I have to.”  
She recognised the sound of Andri’s footfall as he came up the stairs to her room. He rapped gently on the door, but it wasn’t properly closed and swung open as he touched it, leaving him standing in the door frame, looking unsure. “Aemilia?” He spotted her lying dejected on her bed. “Are you all right?”  
She just sighed.  
He closed the door behind him before coming and lying beside her on the bed, both of them staring up at the ceiling. “You seemed troubled earlier,” he said, “and I know why, but I just wanted to make sure that this won’t be a problem.”  
“A problem?” Aemilia looked at him sceptically.  
“You’re not going to bother Camven and the others, are you?”  
Aemilia’s jaw clenched. “Camven’s a Warden now, and so I will treat him as such.”  
“And Nehel? And Isera?”  
“Is that her name?” The ceiling glared back at Aemilia. “They are not Wardens,” she said.  
“Which means?”  
“I will not treat them at all,” she concluded, reluctantly.  
Andri smiled a little. “Worse than I’d hoped. Better than I’d feared.” He sat up, and looked back down at Aemilia on the bed. “Whatever else it is that is playing on your mind, sort it out. I need you at your best.”  
Aemilia’s head rolled clumsily as she turned to look at him. “Why?”  
“I’m sending you out.”  
Aemilia sat bolt upright, eyes widening. “Out? Where? Why? What will I be doing?”  
“I… can’t tell if you’re excited, or-”  
“Of course I’m not excited!” Aemilia scowled. “I’m furious! Why do I need to go out? You need my research here.”  
“The other mages will cope well enough.”  
Aemilia snorted and folded her arms, refusing to meet Andri’s eye. He was giving her his it’s-like-dealing-with-a-toddler look. “What will I be doing?” she repeated.  
Andri hesitated a second before admitting, “You’ll be fighting the archdemon.”  
“WHAT?”  
“I’m sending you to the front lines.”  
“WHY?”  
“We need information, Aemilia. And fast. We Grey Wardens are supposed to be able to slay this thing, but it doesn’t matter whether or not we can kill it permanently if we can’t make it dead in the first place! We need researchers and darkspawn experts out there increasing our effectiveness, and we both know that your magic will be no small help when it comes to the combat itself.”  
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”  
“Aemilia, it’s the best decision.”  
“For who? You? Do you just want me out of the way for some reason?”  
“Of course not-”  
“Is it the slaves? Have they convinced you of something? Never believe a slave, they’ll say-”  
“Aemilia, stop!” Andri Rapace rarely snapped; when he did it brooked utter silence. Aemilia reddened as she immediately stopped speaking, ashamed of how she was cowering under his gaze. “You’re going, and that’s that.”  
Aemilia scowled. “When?”  
“Within the week. Get yourself packed and I’ll finalise your travel plans.”  
“Fine,” Aemilia conceded. “But there’s something that I have to do here first.”  
Andri’s eyes were stern when he said, “Make it quick,” and left, slamming the door behind him. Aemilia threw an ink bottle at the back of the door and it exploded, sending blue droplets flying across the room, glass shards glittering as they skipped across the rug. She let out a brief scream of exasperation before realising that now she’d have to clean the ink up. Grumbling incomprehensibly, she dropped off her bed and kneeled down, scraping up the glass into one pile and vaguely throwing a napkin at the ink dampening the rug. “Fuck all of this. At this rate, the Blight will kill us all no matter what.” She scrubbed the worst of the ink out but didn’t care enough to properly deal with the stain, instead just filling the soiled napkin with the glass fragments and tossing it into her bin. “That’s what our illustrious First Warden just did to me. Toss me aside.” She knuckled her eyes. “Fuck this.”  
There was another knock on her door, and the Fade stirred.  
Aemilia felt it at once, like a twist somewhere deep within, the Fade responding to something. No, not the Fade… a memory! The future, calling!  
Aemilia sprang to her feet, eyes lighting up from the inside as if they had been set on fire, but before she threw herself down on her bed and knocked herself out if she had to, she mustered enough patience to head to the door. The feeling was staying; it wasn’t fading away. Aemilia had a little time. As she approached the door, the sense only got stronger, and she opened it with no small measure of apprehension to see Nehel there, wearing new armour that presumably the Grey Wardens had provided for him, a fresh sword and shield strapped to his back.  
The Fade was buzzing around him – Aemilia couldn’t say why or how, but it was like the future memories were called to him, and they fluttered around him like miraculous butterflies. The veil was thin there, at least for this; the memories haunted Aemilia’s vision already.  
She stared at him. “How?” she asked.  
Nehel looked confused and glanced behind him. “How what?”  
“Get in here!” Aemilia grabbed him and pulled him into her room, closing the door behind him. “The Fade is reacting to you! Stay right there!” Nehel stared. “I’m going to dream.”  
Nehel made some random stammering noises but let Aemilia sit him on the end of her bed and then let her drop unconscious without any further word of explanation. He awkwardly rubbed his hands together, not sure what to do now. ‘The Fade is reacting to you’? What did that mean? He wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to find out.  
Aemilia was amazed. As she slipped effortlessly into the Fade, she saw before her a cluster of memories, gathering around Nehel as if he were magnetised, each glowing, competing to catch her attention. “This is incredbile,” she breathed. In her room, Nehel heard her murmur but still didn’t know what to make of it.  
Aemilia approached less tentatively than usual, knowing somehow that they wouldn’t flee. She reached out a hand…


	6. 9:31 Dragon, Weisshaupt Fortress, Main Hall

“Cairenn Tabris,” the High Constable greeted. She, the Chamberlain of the Grey and two Warden-Commanders were standing atop a short flight of steps in the main hall of Weisshaupt - ‘bigger than it is now’ - as Cairenn approached, Leliana and Zevran in tow.  
“High Constable.” Cairenn gently inclined her head as acknowledgement. “Pleasure to finally meet you.”  
“And you, Hero of Ferelden, though in a way I wish it were not so. Your still being here has certainly made all of this more complicated.”  
“I get the sense that you wish the Hero were dead,” Zevran said, earning a glare from the High Constable, at which he smirked and refused to break the eye contact first, forcing the High Constable to scowl and turn her eyes away to fix on Cairenn.  
“You must understand the position that this has placed me in,” the High Constable went on. “It has always been the understanding that the Warden who slays the archdemon has the soul of the beast kill them. That is simply how an archdemon dies.”  
“I am entirely aware of that, High Constable.”  
“And yet here you are, and His Majesty is also very much alive. The Warden Riordan fell to his death from the archdemon in a failed attempt at slaying it. The most important part of that being ‘failed’.” Cairenn’s expression was unreadable. “So, the possible answers to the question on everyone’s mind: either, somehow there was another Warden there who took the soul of the archdemon, and you are taking the credit-” Cairenn’s eyebrows arched “-the archdemon isn’t actually dead, or something else happened.”  
Cairenn’s gaze was level as the High Constable’s eyes scoured her face for any trace of emotion to reveal the truth. “Those would seem to be the options.” Cairenn shrugged.  
“So, which is it, Tabris?”  
“You’re expecting me to know?”  
“You killed the archdemon. Who else would know?”  
“If there were another Warden there, there is no guarantee that I would be aware of their presence, but that is a possibility. As there have been no archdemon sightings and the horde has scattered, we can assume that the archdemon is indeed dead. And if ‘something else’ happened, would we even know what it was?” Cairenn sighed. “I am very glad to be alive, High Constable, and while I understand the problem, personally I would be much happier with just leaving it be. I am able to continue my life! It is enough for me to simply be grateful.”  
The Chamberlain was writing this interaction down as it happened, quill flying over the page at alarming speed. He looked up at this break in the conversation as the High Constable mulled, dissatisfied, over Cairenn’s words. “Hero of Ferelden,” he said.  
Cairenn looked up at him, expectant.  
He hesitated, before saying, “The Maker watched over you.”  
Cairenn’s lips parted in surprise and her expression softened as the old man’s eyes went back down to his paper. He hadn’t written his own words down.  
The High Constable frowned. “Stop writing, Chamberlain.”  
The Chamberlain rolled up the scroll and tucked it into his robe. “High Constable?”  
“What do you mean?”  
Breathing deeply, the Chamberlain touched a knuckle to his chin. “Cairenn Tabris survived slaying the archdemon, despite every law stating that it should not be possible. Does it not follow that Andraste herself stepped in to save her? It is surely a miracle!”  
Cairenn stood there, unsure what to do or say. Sure, some people had been calling her blessed, but she had never expected such notions from the Chamberlain of the Grey. She didn’t know what to say.  
“At any rate, High Constable, we should all be relieved. The Fifth Blight is over after only one year. This is time for celebration. Let us accept this for the miracle that it is.”  
The High Constable sighed and thought for a long moment. Finally, she spoke again. “There are certain rites that must be observed, and then I should be giving you your placement.”  
Leliana was the one who replied to this. “Her placement?”  
“Warden Tabris is exactly that: a Warden. We shall be assigning her to a position, and she will carry out the work of the Wardens. After all, the Arling of Amaranthine has been granted to the Wardens; it makes sense for the Hero of Ferelden to lead the rebuilding efforts there.”  
Leliana’s eyes shot to the floor and her lip trembled slightly. Cairenn’s heart shuddered inside her chest. It didn’t look like they’d be travelling to Val Royeaux after all.


	7. -208 Ancient, Weisshaupt Fortress, back in the Mage’s Tower

Aemilia emerged from the memory as though from being immersed in water. Nehel grabbed her, alarmed, as she gasped.  
“The Fifth Blight!” she cried. “The fifth!”  
Nehel’s eyelids flickered. “What are you talking about?”  
“The Chamberlain said that the Fifth Blight had just ended!”  
Nehel’s expression of confusion was only intensifying. “But… you are the Chamberlain?”  
“No, no, no, this is far in the future. The Fifth Blight – so that means – that this isn’t the only Blight upon the lands – but it also means that this one must end, for there to be four that follow.” She scowled, thinking. “So this must end. This isn’t the end of Thedas.”  
“That’s… good to know, at least,” Nehel stammered.  
Aemilia crossed her legs. “So what are you here for?”  
Nehel reddened. “I was just hoping to become a Grey Warden. To drink the darkspawn blood.”  
Aemilia’s eyes narrowed. “Even after finding out that it might kill you?”  
He nodded.  
“You want to be with Camven,” she said. It was obvious.  
“I, ah...” Nehel chuckled. “Yes.”  
“That’s a shit reason to join the Wardens.” Nehel cringed under her glare. “We’re not a safe house for you to run to when things get tough.”  
Nehel bit his lip. “Don’t you need everyone you can find?”  
Aemilia cocked her head and stood, smoothing out her robe. “There’s no guarantee that even the strongest warrior will survive the Joining. Anyone with doubt in their heart will fail.” She froze him with a stare. “If the only reason you do this is because you don’t want to leave your lover, then you will never make it.”  
“That’s not the only reason.” Nehel’s jaw clenched. “Those darkspawn nearly killed him! They drove me from my home; they’re tearing Thedas apart!” He had risen to his feet, and his fists were clenched and shaking. “I want to end this Blight as much as anyone, and this is how I do it!”  
Aemilia’s vision clouded.

9:30 Dragon, A field a few leagues south of Lothering

Alistair was looking dubiously across the campfire at the sullen elf who was the only Warden who had survived Ostagar with him. He knew that she was clever and skilled, but he didn’t know much else about her.  
“How did you end up with the Wardens?” he asked.  
Cairenn looked up at him. “How I was recruited?”  
He was instantly regretting asking; her eyes had darkened. “Yes… if you wouldn’t mind.”  
“Some shems raped my cousin. I killed them.” She looked hard, the flames casting her face in dramatic shadows. “I killed them, and I made it painful. I was going to be arrested and probably executed.” She turned her face away. “Duncan invoked the Right of Conscription.”  
Alistair blinked. “Why?”  
She scoffed. “‘Why?’”  
“Why did he conscript a criminal?”  
Cairenn’s face twisted into a scowl. “I did what I had to to save Shianni. Nothing else mattered. It was hardly a crime, when the shems had started it all.”  
Alistair was feeling increasingly uncomfortable. He didn’t like the sound of his travelling companion – although he supposed it couldn’t get much worse than Morrgian. He glanced over at where she gazed into a separate campfire away from there and shuddered. She both pissed him off and freaked him out.  
“What are you thinking so hard about?” Cairenn asked, catching his eye.  
Alistair giggled nervously. “I, just… lots of the Wardens came to us because they wanted to save the world, to protect people.” He trailed off, not wanting to offend her because it was more than likely that she could rip him to shreds, especially if her crazy dog leapt in on the action. “You’re here because you have to be.”  
Cairenn’s expression was utterly still. “What of it?”  
“We’re the only two that survived.” He stopped speaking, sure that his thoughts would anger her.  
“You wish that those who chose to be Wardens were here, rather than someone who is here because they murdered some people, and Duncan took pity.” Instead of twisting into anger, her expression lost its sharp edges, leaving Alistair surprised. “You must think that I am just the luckiest new recruit alive.” She stood up and placed her hands on her hips. “You should know, that just because the way I may have come to be here was not the most – wholesome – among the Wardens, it doesn’t mean that I have any more or less right to be here. And I know how much losing Duncan has hurt you, Alistair, but there can’t be many people alive who could see so many people die and not feel something.” Her eyes clouded over. “I did not know the Wardens as well as you did – I barely knew any at all – but I know exactly what is at stake here. When I killed those men, I was fighting for my cousin, for my home, for my right to live and for hers. The darkspawn are threatening that. The darkspawn are threatening everyone.” She clenched her fists. “I want to end the Blight as much as anyone, and this is how I do it!”

-208 Ancient, Weisshaupt Fortress, Mage’s Tower

Nehel waited awkwardly as Aemilia swayed. “Chamberlain?”  
She started alert and was looking at him differently. “You want to save Thedas, and Camven. For you they’re one and the same.” Nehel blinked; Aemilia sighed. “We have no more treated darkspawn blood at the moment, but...” Her eyes lit up. “Listen. Memories of the future cluster around you – it’s incredible and impossible and I don’t understand but it doesn’t matter. If you can keep the future memories coming, then perhaps I’ll be able to find something that will help us end the Blight.”  
“So what exactly are these memories that you’re talking about?”  
“There’s an elf, called Cairenn Tabris.” Aemilia began pacing. “She’s travelling with a human woman named Leliana and an elf man named Zevran. She’s a Grey Warden, and she killed the archdemon, ending the Fifth Blight. But, she didn’t die when she did it.” Aemilia seized Nehel’s shoulders. “For whatever reason, memories of her cluster around you. If I can see enough of them, then maybe they’ll be something that we can use.”  
Nehel’s eyes were showing the whites all around. “How far in the future is this?”  
“I don’t know.” Aemilia frowned. “It seems a long way away. Everything’s different. Weisshaupt looks wrong.”  
“Then how do you know that you’ll find anything worth having?”  
Aemilia took a breath. “There’s a chance. And, either way, this information may be invaluable, if we record it for future generations of Wardens. Perhaps they’ll find out why Cairenn didn’t die. Perhaps, they’ll even be able to end the Fifth Blight before it even properly begins. All of these are things to hope.”  
Nehel shook his head. “So what do you want from me?”  
“Andri is sending me to the front lines to help to fight the archdemon,” she explained. “I want you to come with me. You can even bring Camven, if you must, but I can collect some darkspawn blood and treat it on the way. Or, perhaps we could even get some archdemon blood, because that also works. Either way, you can be a Warden, and when we end the Blight, you and your boyfriend can stay together. Sound good?”  
Nehel chewed his lip. “Where are we going?”  
“I don’t know exactly, yet. You’ll have to talk to Camven, as well, I suppose.” She swallowed. “Come and find me tomorrow and we can discuss this? I would ask you to stay so that I could find more memories, but I have to write this one down before I forget it, and then I should bring this before the First Warden.”  
Nehel nodded slowly. “I’ll find you tomorrow,” he said, and left Aemilia’s room.  
She was left staring at the back of the door. But quickly, she pounced on her quill and ink and scrawled down the memory, remembering it almost perfectly since it had just happened. She skimmed over the transcript, puzzling over the words.  
One of the first questions that reached her lips was, “Who is Andraste?”


	8. -208 Ancient, Weisshaupt Fortress, Griffin Stables

It had been a day since Camven had become a Grey Warden, but it didn’t feel that long, largely because nothing had happened and there was barely anyone around to add interest to the long hours. Isera was stuck in a cycle of nothing at all. Camven and Nehel kept disappearing – Isera could guess exactly what they were doing – and while Mili would find her every now and again and make conversation, for the most part Isera just sat around in the griffon stables, slowly earning their trust. When she had first entered they had fled before her, refusing to come close and growing aggressive if she tried to approach them instead. So, Isera had begun to just sit against the wall for hours at a time, and they had begun to draw closer and closer. Finally, today, one began nosing against her leg with its beak. Too afraid of scaring it away to move, she just let it poke at her knee before it drew back and looked her full in the face with frighteningly yellow eyes.  
“Hello,” she whispered, unsure what else to do.  
The griffon snorted and tossed its head before trotting away.  
Isera didn’t know what to make of that so she just sat there for another moment before Dwyron Godic stepped out into the stables and came towards her, the griffons clearing a path for him. “Hello!” he greeted excitedly, flopping down beside her.  
“Hello,” she replied. “How’s being a Grey Warden?”  
Dwyron laughed. “Hungry work. My appetite has exploded. And it already wasn’t small.” His smile was infectious. “Camven’s also tearing into his food.”  
Isera smiled. “Becoming feral, then? That’s something to look forward to.”  
“It’s going to be great,” Dwyron agreed.  
They watched the griffins rove around the stables until Dwyron said, “There are nightmares.”  
Isera raised her eyebrows. “But dwarves don’t dream.”  
Dwyron sighed and leaned back. “It’s not dreaming, I suppose, because we can’t do that. But it’s… seeing things.” He raised a hand and stared at it. “The archdemon, roaring. Howling. Darkspawn seething around its feet.”  
“You look worried. You never look worried.”  
“It’s just odd. I’ve never experienced anything like it before.” His smile sprang back up, although its seemed forced. “I guess you’ll find out.”  
“I’ll find out? You’re still assuming that I’ll become a Grey Warden.”  
“Of course I am.”  
Isera shook her head. “But why? I never agreed to that.”  
“You’re here, aren’t you?”  
“For Camven’s sake.”  
“You’re still here, aren’t you?”  
“Where else would I go?”  
Dwyron exhaled but his eyes sparkled, leaving Isera oddly apprehensive of his next sentence. “Come with me,” he said, sticking out a hand and standing.  
Isera blinked. “What? Where?”  
He shook his head. “Just come on.”  
Hesitating only a second longer, Isera let him take her by the hand and lead her back into Weisshaupt, where he took her down a path she couldn’t remember well from her tour with Mili and then up winding stairs, up and up and up until Isera’s thighs were burning and her lungs were threatening to burst. Finally, after an eternity, they left the shelter of the tower that they had been climbing up through and out into the sun.  
Isera’s mouth dropped open at the view spread out before her: the southern forests encroaching as an emerald sea to one side and the rest, exposed grassy plains that stretched forever and ever and ever in every other direction.  
The scope, and the impossibly bright colours – blues and greens like nothing that Isera had ever seen – took Isera’s breath away.  
They had come out on top of Weisshaupt’s main tower, onto a small platform no wider across than Isera was tall, that allowed her to see further than she ever had in her entire life. To the north, she could just see a glittering lake beaded out against the landscape, but in every direction was the wide open sky, bluer than anything in the world.  
“When I first left Kal-Sharok,” Dwyron told her, still holding her hand, more tightly than before, “I couldn’t stand the outdoors. I kept feeling like I would fall into the sky. I’m much better with it now, but I still seek out places like this to make me face my fears.”  
Isera looked down at him, and noticed that his hand was slightly sweaty. “Are you afraid?”  
“Not much now that you’re here,” he told her, and his face crinkled up in a smile. “I thought you might like it. I don’t think that slaves are allowed to places like this whenever they want.”  
“No, they’re not.” Isera breathed deeply; the air was cool and tasted like she was licking ice. “Thanks.”  
He puffed his chest out. “I am ever chivalrous,” he exclaimed, pressing a hand against his chest. “Even when I am afraid.”  
Isera nodded happily – she couldn’t take her eyes off the view, no matter how hard she tried. Beaming, Dwyron watched her, but he couldn’t shake off his fear enough to let go of her hand – yet. “You look happy.”  
“I’ve never seen a view like this. We’re so high up!”  
“I know! There’s so much sky! Really… a lot...” His forehead creased. “I’m going back inside.”  
“You sure?” Isera shot him a worried glance.  
“I’m sure.” He patted her hand before ducking back down the stairs. Isera chewed her lip, gazing back at the horizon before giving in and going after him. She found him right under the trap door, shaking himself out and jumping up and down to calm himself.  
“Dwyron?”  
“Isera?” He looked back at her in surprise.  
“Why did you bring me here if you knew it would scare you?”  
“I found it by myself just before I came to see you in the stables, but I didn’t want to go up alone. But I wanted to go up. It’s easier on the ground, or when I’m busy, but stuff like that is still beyond me. That’s why I’m here. Face my fears.” He beamed, placed his hands on his hips. “I faced them. I’ll get better. I know it. Especially if you keep coming with me, eh?”  
Isera’s smile was reluctant but grateful. “Guess I can’t leave, then, can I?”  
Dwyron eyes closed as his smile widened. “Suppose not, eh?”


	9. -208 Ancient, Weisshaupt Fortress, Main Hall

First Warden Andri Rapace listened to Aemilia’s proposal with a surprising patience, his eyes running over the intended travellers.  
Aemilia Dura was brilliant, a dreamer, a prodigy, raised and tutored in the great cities of the Tevinter Imperium, born to a noble family and with skill in magic like none that Andri had ever seen. She had never been expected to join the Wardens, but many years ago had come to them anyway, though Andri had always known that she would never have been there hadn’t it been for Velia Quentin, a spectacular warrior and Aemilia’s great friend and cousin, who had been set on joining the Wardens for as long as she had been able to remember. Together, they had been unstoppable. Now, Aemilia was alone, and bitter. Which was why Andri was so surprised that she was so eagerly asking to bring along two companions on her journey, one of whom was once a slave, and the other of whom was his lover.  
“...and I can get the darkspawn blood for Nehel’s joining,” Aemilia was saying, “because, like you said, every Warden.” She was acting so out of the ordinary that Andri finally cut her off.  
“And the part that you’re not telling me is...”  
“The part I’m not telling you?”  
“This has all been very inspirational, but what’s the real reason you want to take them with you?” Andri wasn’t sure what he expected the reason to be, because he couldn’t think of one that wasn’t far too sadistic for Aemilia.  
She sighed. “The Fade reacts to Nehel for some reason. Visions of a particular future seem to… cluster around him, if you understand. If he’s around, I can see the future in amazing clarity.” Despite her reluctance to tell him in the first place, as she spoke her eyes were lighting up with excitement at the notion. “And if we travel together, I’m sure to see all sorts of things. Course, he would want to be bringing his lover,” she added, with a flashing expression of hesitancy and a subtle – but not unnoticed – glance sideways at Camven’s jagged slave tattoos.  
“What exactly are these visions of?” Andri asked, furrowing his brow.  
“They happen just after the Fifth Blight. And during, sometimes. It’s confusing, but I’m determined to order them properly.”  
Andri cleared his throat. “The… Fifth Blight.”  
“The Fifth. I know, right! It was crazy to find out, trust me! But don’t you think that this should be invaluable? Perhaps we can get information on ending the Blight – or just anything about the future could be priceless for future generations if recorded properly, don’t you think?”  
Thinking hard, Andri waited for a full minute before he finally spoke. It was amazing, if it was true. “How do you know that this isn’t a demon deceiving you?”  
Aemilia scoffed. “I’m a dreamer, Andri. Trust me, I know.”  
Andri splayed his hands out before him. “Well… I can’t see much harm in it, at least.” Aemilia’s eyes lit up. “But you will have to keep them both safe. I never expected to be sending brand new Wardens out to the front.”  
“I will protect them,” she promised. “Nehel may be the key to the greatest magical achievements… well, ever! I’m not giving that up.”  
Andri looked from one to the other and then back again, before finally nodding. “You have my leave to go.” The grin that Aemilia burst into was so wide that it almost threatened to split her face in two as Camven and Nehel shared a smile and slipped their hands together. Andri raised an eyebrow but was smiling, just a little. “I assume you’ll be ready to head out tomorrow, then?”  
“Tomorrow?” Aemilia spluttered. Andri folded his arms. “Sure, tomorrow’s just fantastic.” She left the main hall, shaking her head but looking satisfied.  
“I welcome you to the Grey Wardens, Nehel Adaris,” Andri said, once she was gone. “I wish you luck with all you do for us, and for yourself.”  
Nehel coloured slightly. “Thank you, First Warden.”  
“And… look after the Chamberlain, won’t you?”  
Camven bowed his head. “We shall.”  
Together, they left the hall, leaving Andri shaking his head at the ground behind him. Outside was Isera, who had a complicated tangle of emotions across her features. “Camven,” she said, shooting a look at Nehel that said ‘leave us alone’.  
Nehel gave Camven’s hand a squeeze before winding his way towards the rooms that they had been granted for their stay.  
Isera turned to Camven. “You’re leaving?”  
“Yes… let me guess, you were listening from outside the door?”  
“You know me so well.”  
“Sorry I didn’t ask you first… I only found out that we might be going this morning and I couldn’t find you earlier. Should have tried harder.”  
“That’s okay. You don’t have to ask me to do stuff any more. We’re free now, aren’t we?”  
Camven placed a hand on her shoulder. “Are you staying here? Is that alright?”  
“Yes, I’m staying. For as long as they’ll have me, at least, considering the fact that I don’t really want to be a Grey Warden. Without the Chamberlain, they’ll be one mage short, though, so hopefully I’ll be of help. I’m looking forward to it! I’ll be doing something by myself, and making my own way. Not that I want to get rid of you or anything-”  
“It’s okay!” Camven cut her off with a laugh. “I understand. I just wanted to make sure that you wouldn’t mind being on your own. Guess you’ll be better than okay, though.” His eyes softened. “You’ll be amazing, Isera.”  
“Thank you,” she said, blushing a little. “I just feel like I’ve been being a terrible sister.”  
“You haven’t. Promise.”  
Isera sighed, before pulling her brother into a hug. “It didn’t quite go as planned, did it? Our escape? We were going to live utopian lives: you and Nehel, me and myself, growing old together in some old cottages in the mountains.”  
“Maybe we still can,” Camven suggested. “I’ll buy you a cottage somewhere after this is all over. Nehel and I can live just down the road. We’ll have kids, and you can be their cool auntie,” he teased.  
Isera laughed into his shoulder; when she pulled back, tears were just pricking her eyes. “We’ll say our goodbyes tomorrow,” she urged, revelling in the emotions flooding through her. The numbness that had settled over her while Camven was dying had vanished, and she felt so different than before that it was throwing her off. “I’m going to go and introduce myself to the mages in the Mage Tower - see if they need anything.”  
“Good luck,” Camven told her; she reddened and ran off, dark braids streaming out behind her.  
Alone in the foyer, Camven walked out towards the front courtyard of Weisshaupt and stared out at the sky. There was a whole world out there, and now, he and Isera were free.  
When he thought about it, he could still feel the ghosts of agony tracing down the old scars on his back, and the feeling of his will buckling at the yolk of his master. He thought about the secrets and the plots and the violence and how much it had cost for them to get out of there alive.  
But here they were, and everything was different. And they would be apart, but that was okay.  
Camven smiled at the sky.


	10. -208 Ancient, Weisshaupt Fortress, Front Courtyard

Aemilia was saddling up a griffon for flight with the ease of one who had spent most of a decade flying across the skies of Thedas. Spectre had been gifted to Aemilia upon her Joining by the First Warden at the time, a former magister named Vel Marinus who had always had a soft spot for Aemilia. He had died not long after that, and Rapace had taken his place, but Spectre had endured as a reminder of the old man’s lopsided smile and wrinkled hands that always clutched Aemilia’s as he told her stories of his life before the Wardens.  
Spectre was magnificent, and Aemilia loved her. She was a combination of white and golden, wrapped in splendour, and her eyes were an intense fiery orange. She accepted the saddle with a restless pawing of the ground; Aemilia hadn’t flown her in far too long.  
Nehel and Camven walked out of Weisshaupt together, but stopped in their tracks when they saw Aemilia and three griffons.  
“I got you a griffon each,” Aemilia called over to them. “Come on and saddle them.”  
They walked over cautiously, unwilling to let go of each others’ hands. “Is it like saddling a horse?” Camven asked nervously.  
“Oh. OH. I forget that you two are new. We don’t have enough staff for them to fix you up, uh...” She finished with Spectre and grabbed one of the other saddles she had found. “Come on, I’ll show you.” Beckoning the two of them over, she began to show them how to saddle a griffin. It wasn’t altogether complex – just fiddly.  
Camven was a quick learner, and he took the other saddle and readied the third griffin until all three were saddled. Of the two other than Spectre, one was a sleek black creature, smaller than most but built to be intimidatingly fast, and the other was grey, muscled and ferocious. Camven had just put the saddle on the black one, and his hands lingered on its flank. “Do you want that one?” he asked Nehel, nodding at the grey griffon, his eyes screaming that he really liked the black one.  
Nehel laughed and nodded. “Sure.”  
Camven looked over to Aemilia. “Do these two have names?”  
Aemilia shrugged. “Not that I’m aware of. Mine is called Spectre. Isn’t she beautiful?” Aemilia ran a loving hand down Spectre’s neck. “Anyway, we should get going. The First Warden seems very eager to be rid of me.” She said it jokily, but an edge of irritation touched her voice.  
Nehel tied his supplies to his saddle. He was wearing armour more fine and expensive than anything that he had worn in his life, but despite its sturdiness, it was light and manoeuvrable. He felt confident. He was going to be a Grey Warden, together with Camven, and – yes – they were going to the front lines, but now that Camven was better, he felt unstoppable.  
The Wardens were fighting back against the darkspawn – the Blight would surely be stopped soon. And Nehel would be there to see it.  
“This is going to be interesting.” He regarded the griffon with no small measure of apprehension. It was going to be a considerable task to mount it, let alone ride it.  
“I’ve come up with a name,” Camven said quietly as he secured his own packs to the saddle.  
Nehel looked over. “What is it?”  
“Arlathan,” Camven replied, with a tentative smile. The griffon snorted.  
“I think he likes it,” Nehel noted with a chuckle.  
Aemilia was jumping up onto Spectre and taking her for a few experimental laps of the courtyard – not leaving the ground, just stretching Spectre’s legs – when Andri Rapace emerged into the courtyard. He waited as Aemilia made her slow way over to him, peering down smugly from her elevation. “First Warden,” she greeted.  
“You’ll be okay getting there?” he asked, as way of greeting.  
“Just look for the massive dragon.” Aemilia laughed. “I’m sure we’ll find it.”  
Andri’s smile was only skin deep. “Be careful, Chamberlain.”  
“If you wanted me to be careful, you could not have sent me,” she pointed out, “but never mind. I know that there’s more to this that you’re not telling me, but that’s fine. At least I still get to do my research. I’ll keep in touch, First Warden.”  
“Goodbye, Aemilia. It’s been a pleasure.”  
A frown creased Aemilia’s brow. “You’re not expecting to see me again.”  
Andri looked down, nodded, and walked back into Weisshaupt.  
Aemilia’s lips parted as he disappeared inside. “Andri...” she began, but he was gone, leaving Aemilia with her mouth hanging open, reluctant understanding souring her mood. “Fuck it,” she muttered, heart thudding against her ribcage.  
“Camven!” someone yelled. Aemilia turned her burning eyes to see the girl slave elf racing across the courtyard to meet him. He turned to her with a grin and swept her up into his arms.  
“I’m going to miss you,” Camven told her when he let her down.  
She laughed. “You too, brother. Stay safe.”  
He kissed her on the forehead. “We’re free now, Isera. For better or worse.”  
She exhaled. “For better or worse.”  
He gave her one more look before pulling himself clumsily onto his griffon – Aemilia remembered that it was called Arlathan – almost falling down, but not quite, and shooting Isera a grin before nervously guiding Arlathan over to where Nehel and Aemilia were now waiting for him.  
“Don’t worry about the flying,” Aemilia advised them.  
“Oh, of course, that was the part that I was worrying about the least,” Camven snorted.  
“The griffons know what they’re doing,” Aemilia explained. “You basically just have to make sure they keep flying in the same direction, so just follow my lead.”  
“Do we guide them like horses, then?” Nehel asked. “Like with the knees?” He fingered the reins, beginning to feel more confident.  
“You can ride the horses, and I can saddle them,” Camven told Nehel with a laugh. “Between us, we might be able to manage a griffon.”  
Aemilia raised her eyebrows at them, Spectre ruffling her feathers beneath her. “Are you two ready then? Got all the equipment that I found for you?” Camven and Nehel nodded. “Guess we’re set, then. To start flying, kick your heels in like this-” Aemilia demonstrated, but carefully didn’t actually touch Spectre “-and pull the reins back. Make sure your knees are clear of the wings, or your kneecaps are going to shatter.” She smirked. “Good?”  
Camven and Nehel shared a bordering-on-terrified look before nodding in unison.  
Aemilia turned back to wave at Kaeso, who was standing at the edge of the courtyard, having groomed and prepared the griffons for them. He looked surprised that Aemilia was waving at him (almost as surprised as Aemilia felt that she was) but waved back with the ghost of a smile.  
“Let’s go,” she said, and kicked Spectre into motion. Spectre spread her wings and, with a furious beat, sprung into the air. Aemilia let out a whoop of euphoria before guiding Spectre to a stop, hovering a few metres above the ground. “Come on then, you two,” she urged, wind buffeting her face.  
Camven went first, kicking Arlathan into motion and leaping into the sky with a yelp of mixed excitement and terror. Arlathan reached Spectre in the air and knew to wait, so the two griffons waited together for Nehel, who finally pieced together his courage and came to join them.  
Aemilia had missed flying; she had been cooped up in Weisshaupt for too long – she didn’t care for fighting on the front lines, but at least it would give her the chance to see the world again. A childhood spent travelling had made for adulthood seeming positively boring in comparison.  
“Let’s go and be Grey Wardens,” she said, and spurred Spectre out into the blue.


	11. -208 Ancient, Weisshaupt Fortress, the office of the First Warden

Lavinia met Mili outside Rapace’s office. “He asked to see you too?”  
Mili looked up and smiled; she had been loitering outside, gazing absently at the floor. “Yeah. Do you know what he wants?”  
“No. What are you waiting for?”  
“He told me to when I stuck my head in. Guess I’m waiting for you?”  
The door opened: Andri’s head poked out. “Feel free to come in, you two,” he said, and they followed him inside.  
The First Warden’s office had become much more homely since Andri had taken ownership of it; there was a curved desk which Andri had covered with old books and then placed a thin lace tablecloth over the centre of. Squishy armchairs filled the space, and he always kept a fire crackling in the fireplace. The rug was red and soft, compressing gently under Lavinia’s boots as she walked in.  
“First Warden?” Lavinia began, once she had sunk into a green armchair and Mili had taken the one beside her. “What do you need?”  
He sat on his desk, cross-legged. He didn’t seem to like chairs much. “I trust you two with my life,” he said, tapping his fingers on his knees. His hair was scraped back from his face, tied back messily and shiny with grease; he looked like he hadn’t slept, or eaten, in days.  
Mili cocked her head. “Where is this going?”  
He shook his head. “Don’t worry. It’s actually something good.” Lavinia raised an eyebrow. “I’m leaving Weisshaupt in your capable hands.”  
Lavinia sat forwards in her chair. “Excuse me?”  
“I’m leaving the Fortress for a while, so someone needs to run the day-to-day. There aren’t many Wardens here, so it shouldn’t prove too difficult – I just have to deal with a few minor problems, usually, so you’ll be fine.”  
“Where are you going?”  
“Clearing some darkspawn tunnels nearby.”  
“Couldn’t you send someone else to do that?” Lavinia demanded.  
“No?” Andri laughed nervously. “I’m sorry – is this a big problem?”  
Mili laid a hand on Lavinia’s knee, silencing her before she could shout; she was growing increasing red and her features were twisting. “Doesn’t it seem a bit… foolish? You’re the First Warden, the most senior Grey Warden in Thedas. We can’t put you at risk.”  
Rapace shook his head. “I’m no good at leading if all I do is cower behind my walls. Besides, never fear, your First Warden should be returning soon enough.” His eyes softened. “It’ll be fine.”  
“Who are you taking with you?” Lavinia asked sourly. “You can’t be going alone.”  
“Of course not. I’m taking Dominik and Kaeso.”  
Mili coughed. “Wouldn’t have been my first choice,” Lavinia muttered.  
Rapace chuckled. “Your brother will be fine, Lavinia.”  
Lavinia snorted. “Of course he will. I’m more worried about Kaeso, and even then, I don’t think that it’s a good idea for you to be going out in the first place.”  
Andri’s eyes went to Mili. “Are you willing to take Weisshaupt while I am away?”  
Lavinia clasped Mili’s hand in hers and stared with an intensity that may have cowed anyone else, but Mili met Lavinia’s gaze with a frown. “If you are sure that you want to go, then I suppose that there’s nothing we can do, is there? By the Stone, though, Andri, you could just send someone else and save everyone some trouble.”  
He dropped his feet off the edge of his desk. “I know, Mili, but I trust you both, and it would be nice to get out of the Fortress? It’s been a while.”  
“When will you be going?” Lavinia’s voice was acid.  
“A few days. We should be returning after not long – a week maybe. Please don’t worry.” He broke into a smile. “It’s just a little excursion.”  
Lavinia nodded to Andri, once, curtly, before rising and leaving the room without another word. The door thudded closed behind her.  
Mili pressed her hands together. “How bad does it get?”  
Andri shook his head, not understanding.  
“When the Calling starts?”  
He grimaced. “Riddled me out, huh?”  
“Why are you lying to us, Andri? What does it get you?” She was hurt, which Andri hadn’t intended.  
He bowed his head, his hair beginning to fall loose from its bindings. “I just didn’t want to hurt anyone more than I had to. Let them think that it was an accident; let them get over it like they would any other death.”  
“As Grey Wardens, we have warning. Why won’t you let us say goodbye?”  
Andri looked towards the door. “Should I have told her?”  
Mili stood up. “Yes.” She slammed the door behind her.  
Downstairs, Lavinia was storming to her bedroom, doors opening and closing in a clamour as she powered through the Fortress, flushed and fuming. She was in such a state that she almost barrelled straight through Gallio Capitus when he happened to be in her way, and she did in fact manage to send him sprawling despite her best efforts to slow down once she spotted him. He looked blankly up at the ceiling for a moment before blinking and sitting up with a bewildered expression and apologising. He was quite a tall man, with a mop of brown hair and dark eyes.  
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Lavinia insisted, some her anger venting away as she reached down and pulled him to his feet. “Not your fault that you intercepted my warpath.” Gallio chuckled but didn’t reply, leaving Lavinia to go on to say, “Apparently Andri’s leaving to kill darkspawn. What is he thinking?”  
His expression a mask of thoughtfulness, Gallio shrugged. “He’s a Grey Warden. He’s a soldier. He probably just wants to get back out there.”  
Lavinia’s forehead scrunched up. “It doesn’t seem foolish to you? What if he dies? He’s only taking Dominik and Kaeso.”  
“He’s the First Warden. He’s very skilled.”  
Lavinia just sighed. Gallio was not a Grey Warden, and was instead a member of Weisshaupt staff, having arrived at the Fortress a little under a year before. He was a cook, and an excellent one, and Lavinia had much more enjoyed dinners at Weisshaupt since he had arrived.  
Perhaps that was why he couldn’t understand her irritation. He was no Grey Warden. He didn’t understand how much the Order needed the First Warden, even if perhaps it seemed that he didn’t do much more than sit around Weisshaupt. In truth, from his office in Weisshaupt, he engineered the entire war against the darkspawn – what would the Wardens do now? Even a week away from his work could prove catastrophic in the long run. There was everything, everything wrong with him just leaving like this. Of course, he would put in place measures to account for his absence, but would they be enough?  
Would anything be enough to fill the void?  
A week, Lavinia told herself. Just a week.  
She’d obviously been thinking for too long. Gallio was giving her a mildly concerned look. “Miles away.” She scratched behind her ear. “I’m going to go and hit stuff,” she grumbled, and traced the well-trodden path down to the sparring ring, to find Mili down there, waiting with an obvious sense of expectation – of course she had known that Lavinia would come down here.   
Almost without looking up, Mili tossed Lavinia a blunted blade, tightening the straps of the shield already bound to her arm. “Come on, Lavinia,” she urged. “Work it out.”  
Lavinia broke into a reluctant smile and the two of them settled into the familiar rhythm of thuds and grunts and going blow for blow, circling each other in the sparring ring, until they both dripping with sweat and the knot of rage inside Lavinia hadn’t dissipated but had loosened immeasurably. She looked at Mili, and the familiar features made Lavinia relax. She and Mili had been together like this almost since Lavinia had joined the Wardens, and just knowing that she was there was a comfort to Lavinia’s restless mind.  
“So, now, between us, we’re the First Warden,” Lavinia said once they collapsed on the side of the ring, too worn out to even tear off their sweat-soaked armour.  
“I suppose so.”  
“Can we even do that? We’re nothing compared to Andri.”  
“Oh, I don’t know. Clearly he believes that we can handle this.” Something was weighing on her mind, but Lavinia chose not to ask, because whatever could worry Mili was something that Lavinia didn’t want to think about too much.  
Lavinia stuck out a hand. “Together, then. Anything and everything.”  
“Anything and everything,” Mili agreed, clasping Lavinia’s hand within her own.


	12. -208 Ancient,  about a tenth from Weisshaupt to the Silent Plains, in the wilderness

“I’m assuming that at least one of you can hunt,” Aemilia asked irritably as she shuffled closer to the fire that she had made. She should have taken up Andri on his offer of a proper escort with carriages and servants and real beds. She’d just wanted to ride Spectre again, but had forgotten about the discomforts of life on the road. The griffons grazed happily a way away, unaware of their riders’ troubles.  
Nehel nodded. “I can set up some traps, if you want.”  
“If you would.”  
He rose, and, strapping his new Grey Warden sword to his belt, he disappeared into the woods. Aemilia quite suddenly realised that she was now alone with Camven.  
He was a slave. He was a slave, he was a slave, a slave, a slave, a slave. Was that really all that she could see? It was as if his tattoos were in fact a mask, concealing anything beyond his slavery.  
Former slavery, damn it.  
Aemilia didn’t know if she was trying to become accepting or not. Of course, some would say she should be, but she couldn’t help but imagine how many people that slave had killed to escape, or just think that he should have taken his slavery as a favour and lived with it.  
He’s a slave, a slave, a slave.  
Camven sighed. “You won’t recognise me, but I recognise you.”  
Startled, Aemilia frowned. “What? From where?”  
“Qarinus,” Camven replied. “Must have been, what, seven years ago?”  
“That was before I even joined the Wardens.”  
“I know. You were an altus then, the scion of House Dura, proud and shown off by your family because of the prodigy that you were. My master usually brought me when he travelled around outside. Weren’t many elves in Qarinus back then – I was a status prize.”  
“So where did you see me?”  
“A slave auction.” Somehow, Aemilia couldn’t detect even the slightest edge of bitterness to Camven’s tone. He spoke calmly and without resentment. “Your father was buying plenty – I don’t remember why. My master bought several, but what everyone remembered about that day was when a slave struck you.”  
Aemilia blinked. Fuzzily, she recalled the memory. She could feel the sensation of the slap with crystal clarity, and her hand sprung up to her cheek without her bidding it to. “Why did it hit me?”  
“She,” Camven said, “hit you because your father had just bought her. Before that, she had been free. She didn’t believe that this was justified, and insisted that she was a legal citizen of the Imperium, that you had no right.”  
“I didn’t even provoke her,” Aemilia scowled.  
“Your father bought her. Paid money for her life. Isn’t that enough?”  
Aemilia shook her head. “It’s perfectly legal.”  
“Legal and right are two different things.” Aemilia glowered at Camven across the fire. He smiled. “She slapped you, but your bodyguard hit her right back; he knocked one of her teeth out and dropped her. I was standing nearby. Before I could even think about how stupid it was, I caught her before she hit the ground.”  
Silent, Aemilia waited.  
“She lost her life for that crime. She was hung, drawn and quartered because she dared to slap an altus. And, for the crime of helping her...” Camven unbuckled his breastplate and pulled his shirt over his head, letting Aemilia see his back. “This one.” He pointed at a particularly gruesome scar ripping raggedly down from his left shoulder blade to his hip. It wasn’t the only one there, though, by any means. Dozens of them raked his skin, from little white lines to red, inflamed tears. Aemilia’s breath caught and bile rose in her throat, but she choked it down.  
“Why are you telling me this?”  
“Because she slapped you, so you got to choose the crime. You ordered for her to be hung, drawn and quartered and your expression didn’t even change.”  
“She was a slave, and she slapped me. It was not her place.”  
Camven stuck out a hand and slapped her. Aemilia barked a mirthless laugh as he drew back and her cheek stung.  
“I feel like I should have seen that coming.”  
“Was that my place?” Camven asked.  
Silence.  
“Should I be hung, drawn and quartered, for that? It doesn’t even hurt that much, does it? It didn’t hurt that much then, either.”  
Silence silence.  
Camven yawned. “I hope Nehel comes back with food soon.”  
Aemilia’s lips parted as he changed the topic. She had been expecting him to hammer into her the injustice of slavery, and yet that had been it. An anecdote and a couple of awkward questions? That was it? “That’s it?”  
“What?” Camven smiled. “You want me to give you a speech?”  
“I assumed that you had one prepared.”  
“Maybe tomorrow.”  
“What was the point of this, then? A story? Are you trying to change my mind?”  
“There’s no point.”  
“No point?”  
“Your mind wasn’t made up in the first place.”  
Aemilia stared at him and might have asked him something else, but she didn’t and instead her hand sprung towards her staff. “Fasta vass,” she hissed.  
Camven’s expression twisted into something like repulsion. “What… what is this?” His hands went to his stomach, but then he didn’t seem to decide that the feeling was there and he gave his chest somewhat of a pat-down before giving up.  
“You’re sensing darkspawn,” Aemilia snapped, springing to her feet and spinning her staff in her hands nervously. “Get up, draw your weapon.” Nodding, Camven unsheathed his daggers and stared out into the shadows. “Six of them, that way.” She pointed out to her right and Camven followed her finger. “You’ll get better at sensing them. Probably.”  
Camven cleared his throat and pressed his lips together – whether in concentration or amusement Aemilia wasn’t sure, and proceeded to not care when a shriek erupted into her sight. With a yell, Aemilia threw a Winter’s Grasp spell at it.  
Camven had fought alongside Isera many times, and in his experience a Winter’s Grasp spell was merely a delay: it kept the enemy trapped for a few moments, allowing him to get in plenty of hits before it burst free. But when he sprang at the shriek and buried a dagger in it, it fragmented and split into a thousand thousand pieces that sprinkled the ground like snow. He reeled back in surprise, and looked back at Aemilia.  
Smirking, she said, “Never fought alongside a proper mage before, I see.”  
Camven was forced to wonder how much more powerful than his sister Aemilia was – he was utterly non-magical, but even so he could almost feel the magic radiating from her. There was so much of it, that her hair stood on end.  
“Pay attention!” she yelled, and slammed her staff into the ground. Camven whirled around to see two genlocks buzzing with electricity that lit his face in harsh black and purple. Now his hair was standing to attention, the energy having shuddered so close.  
“Go on, Ensign,” Aemilia urged, spinning her staff in her hands.  
Camven tightened his grip on his daggers and pounced, raining down his blades as fast as he could, spinning so fast that even he could barely see the metal as it flew past. Aemilia half-heartedly sent flames darting over his shoulder, but Camven could feel her eyes on him, evaluating his movements. His first dagger jabbed straight through the neck of one as he blocked a clumsy attack from the other with his second. The first genlock crumpled, gargling, into the dirt. The second came at Camven again, swinging a brutal, twisted greataxe that made Camven’s skin crawl. He didn’t quite spin away fast enough and it grazed his arm, luckily skidding off his new armour with a pained screech, though he knew that he would have some bruises there tomorrow. Agitated that it had hit him, Camven changed tactics and ducked under its next swing to dash as fast as he could behind it and land a back stab which struck with such force that it made the genlock shudder from head to toe before it slid off the blade and flopped with a satisfying thump.  
Aemilia passed her staff from hand to hand, appraising the dead genlocks with her eyes. “We can probably get darkspawn blood for Nehel from one of those,” she said, then added, “but there are three left, closing in. Why don’t you prove that you’re really good for something, Warden-Ensign?”  
“Are we sure that Nehel’s okay?” Camven asked.  
“I don’t sense any other darkspawn nearby. Of course, these ones might already have murdered him, but I doubt it.” Camven paled but his expression steeled when a hurlock pounced into their sights. Determined not to be outdone, Camven threw a dagger that buried itself up to the hilt in the hurlock’s chest. Unfortunately, its armour was thick and the hurlock just staggered before renewing its approach; Camven blocked the downward swipe of its sword with one of his daggers and used the other to slash at its gut, catching a seam in the breastplate and tearing the armour wide open. The hurlock growled, but before it could back away to recover, Camven ducked under its guard and buried his dagger in its chest, using his strength to then drag it down, ripping brutally down through its flesh and causing its blood and guts to spill out over his hands.  
Disgusted, he pulled his dagger free and kicked the now motionless corpse of the hurlock aside. He turned back to Aemilia with a smile, perhaps expecting appraisal, but he found her standing with her arms folded, two shrieks moving towards her in laborious slow motion. She had her eyebrows raised almost high enough to touch her hairline. “Come on, then, Ensign. Are you just going to leave these two?”  
He shook his head and swiftly skewered them both, shoving their bodies away from the camp. Aemilia was already crouching over the hurlock that Camven had torn practically in half, having pulled a phial from her belt and begun to fill it from the blood dribbling pathetically out.  
Camven waited patiently until she had enough, when she dropped a palm against the floor, creating a shockwave that sent the hurlock flying away, limp as a rag doll.  
“I need to treat this. Please don’t distract me.” She exhaled and settled beside the fire, her eyes closing, the phial of blood clutched in her fingers. Camven watched, and saw the phial begin to glow, just a little, but enough to know that it wasn’t normal darkspawn blood any more.  
After an age, Aemilia opened her eyes and tucked the phial back into her belt. “Drinking the blood of the archdemon makes Grey Wardens,” she said. Camven got the sense that she wasn’t really talking to him, and instead speaking as she would to an empty room when it got too quiet to bear. “And that’s how we made the first ones, decades ago. But, that is notoriously difficult to come by, so the Grey Warden mages found a way to replicate that effect – with normal darkspawn blood. Otherwise, we’d barely have enough Wardens to fill a quarter of Weisshaupt’s bedrooms.”  
Camven listened to her silently, pulling his knees up to his chest.  
Then Nehel reappeared, hoisting up two rabbits strung by thin wire around their ankles. “Who’s hungry?” he asked brightly.  
“Me,” Camven laughed.  
With the lull in the action, Aemilia was left with her thoughts, remembering what Camven had said before the darkspawn had appeared, how he had tried to make her see something about slaves beyond what she already knew.  
‘Your mind wasn’t made up in the first place.’  
What did that mean? Aemilia knew exactly what she thought: slaves were slaves, and should know their place. They should serve their masters faithfully, because their masters provide for them and give them purpose. The slave life must be almost easy, she thought.  
But… but… Aemilia remembered the desperation on that woman’s face as she had been sold, the desperation turning to anger and the anger to a slap. The fear on every face with the slave tattoos. She thought of Camven’s back. Was that just?  
Was any of this just?  
For a second, Aemilia called into questioning everything that he had ever known.  
But then she remembered Velia and her resolve multiplied, hardened into platinum. Camven seemed to notice, and he shot her a wide-eyed glance across the campfire while chattering away to Nehel about something.  
Velia’s smile. Their bond as close as sisters. Maker, was Aemilia sure.  
Camven looked down.  
Nehel cooked and served his catch; Aemilia tore through hers and then stared at the other two intensely. “Your Joining is ready for you, if you are ready for it,” she told Nehel.  
His eyes widened in surprise. “You got the darkspawn blood?” Camven coughed and pointed at the blood spattered over the camp. “Oh. Should have noticed that.”  
Aemilia pulled the phial from her belt and held it out to him. “All yours.”  
He took it from her and weighed it in his hands, almost cradling it, like a wounded animal, before he took it in his fingers and pulled the lid free. Camven reached out and placed a hand on his knee, giving him a reassuring smile.  
Nehel nodded, and downed it in one.  
Everything was extraordinarily quiet besides the crackling of fire before Nehel’s breathing descended into frantic gasps and he clutched the sides of his head with shaking hands; Camven’s face contorted with worry as Nehel collapsed back onto the ground.  
Aemilia must have seen a thousand Joinings. “He’s going to be fine,” she told Camven, barely glancing up.  
“How do you know without looking him over properly?”  
Aemilia snorted. “I’ve seen more Joinings than you can imagine, Ensign.”  
“Aemilia-”  
“It’s Chamberlain,” she cut him off, eyes dark and dead as they observed him over the fire. “I never gave you permission to use my name, Ensign.”  
Camven hesitated. “What if I gave you permission to use mine?”  
“I wouldn’t use it, Ensign.”  
“As you like, Chamberlain. I was just going to ask, how long will he sleep for?”  
Aemilia blew her cheeks out. “Few hours – few days – depends. Usually just a few hours.”  
Camven eased Nehel’s sleeping form into his lap and nodded. Nehel murmured slightly and curled up there.  
“You can take first watch,” Aemilia said. “I want to get a few memories tonight.”  
“Okay, Chamberlain,” Camven said as Aemilia lay down and, eased by decades of practise, she eased into an almost immediate sleep.


	13. 9:35 Dragon, very lost, somewhere in a vast forest to the north

“Ah… shit...” Cairenn squinted at her surroundings before scowling down at her map again.  
Nothing looked any more familiar. She might have tried to use the sun to orient herself, but she could barely see anything of the sky through the thick canopy of leaves drooping overhead.  
“ZEVRAN!” she yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth. “WHERE ARE YOU?”  
When there was no reply, she made a long, drawn-out sigh and tucked her map into her pocket.  
She looked extraordinarily different from before: she had shorn her hair down on one side while the rest fell at easily triple its previous length, plaited back from her face and tumbling down her back like liquid gold. She had what looked like an old scar splintering her temple that hadn’t been there before, and her features were creased by lines that might have been laugh lines or worry lines. She wasn’t old – she just seem aged, more behind her eyes than before them.  
She blew a raspberry and sat down, pulling one knee up to her chest and resting her chin on it. Her armour clinked against a tree as she leaned against it. “Well. This just went brilliantly.” She craned her neck back and gazed at the branches above. “I bet he won’t have found anything anyway. It feels like none of this is going anywhere.”  
As if suddenly realising what she was saying, she cut herself off - “No. I need to find the cure; I need to be able to stay with Leliana. I don’t want her to have to...” She frowned. “And for myself. It’ll be twenty-five years left now. Maker...”  
“Cairenn!” a familiar voice floated through the tress. “Talking to yourself, now? And you’re in the wrong place. By a long way.” Zevran burst out of the under brush, laughing, hands on his hips. “Never fear, Cairenn, your favourite assassin is here!”  
Cairenn slapped her hands over her mouth. “Nathaniel Howe is here?” she exclaimed in mock excitement.  
“Ah, you so wound me!” Zevran’s grin was wolfish as he pulled Cairenn into a hug. Cairenn had never seen him hug anyone other than her, and she relished every one.  
“Did you find anything?” Cairenn asked as she drew back.  
“Straight to business? As you like, but perhaps we shall mix in a little pleasure later?” He arched an eyebrow cheekily as he removed his pack from his shoulders and rummaged through it. “I heard of someone who may be able to help. I got the details, but couldn’t follow it up, so I’m afraid I don’t know what you may be walking into.”  
“I’m sure I’ll survive,” Cairenn said wearily as she took the slip of paper that Zevran offered. “Merrill,” she read aloud before skimming the address. “Who is she?”  
“A Dalish elf,” he replied. “From what I gather, she is trying to remove the taint from a corrupted mirror.”  
“Remove the taint?”  
“I know her clan, but they weren’t very willing to talk to me about this in particular,” he chuckled.  
Cairenn blew her cheeks out. “It’s one more lead than I had before.”  
“What were you looking for, may I ask?”  
“Grand Enchanter Fiona used to be a Grey Warden, but lost the taint. No one seems to know why; I was trying to find out, but everything I tried was a dead end. Still worth bearing in mind – there might be something I missed.”  
“You work far too hard,” Zevran told her, but it wasn’t flirty any more, and instead Cairenn heard pity, which made her bite her lip.  
“Maybe,” she admitted, “but I’m determined to do this.”  
“I wish you every luck, Cairenn,” Zevran said sincerely. “But, should I accompany you out of the forest? You appear to be distinctly lost.”  
“Well… yes… that I am. I should be most pleased should you… help me find the way out.”  
“You’re not very experienced with forests, are you, Cairenn?” Zevran chuckled as he began to lead the way.  
“I grew up in the Alienage, Zevran. Any city and I’ve got it covered, but you always insist on all the trees when we meet up.”  
“One must pertain a sense of mystery at all times,” he insisted with a waggle of his finger. “I have the mastery of an assassin!” He waved his hands in front of his face and promptly did a backflip, making Cairenn laugh. She gracefully performed a cartwheel and soon the two of them were creating a clumsy gymnastics routine through the forest. They gave up after a few minutes and descended into inane chatter, swatting branches away, catching up. Cairenn talked about her travels but skipped past most of the research that she had done, knowing that Zevran would find himself compelled to make her stop working so hard if she were entirely honest. Zevran described his life on the run from everyone from the Antivan Crows to the Crown of Ferelden. “Our good King Alistair doesn’t seem to like me much,” he said.  
“Clearly he’s not trying very hard. Only a thousand men? That’s barely anything,” Cairenn ribbed him.  
“Or perhaps His Majesty is underestimating me.” Zevran cracked his knuckles.  
“Zevran, is it possible to underestimate you?”  
Zevran descended into cackles; he linked his arm through Cairenn’s. “I believe, my very favourite Warden, that we are almost out of the forest. Nearest city is a league or two that way.” He pointed.  
“My natural habitat. Good to know.” They broke the edge of the forest, and sun blinded Cairenn.  
“And I believe that this is where I take my leave.” His hand lingered on her arm as he drew back. “It has been most wonderful seeing you again, Cairenn. Cairenn!” He repeated her name with satisfaction. “So infrequently I get to say that name, now. But I shall always treasure it.”  
Cairenn flushed and hugged him. “Goodbye, Zevran. Thank you.”  
“You are welcome, Cairenn.” He kissed her on the forehead – an unexpected but not unwelcome gesture – and disappeared back into the woods, melting away as if he were never there.  
Cairenn took some breaths and knotted her hands together. “To Kirkwall, then. To cure the taint,” she said to herself as she tightened her daggers against her back and walked out towards answers.


	14. -210 Ancient, Qarinus, Auction Square

Aemilia wasn’t expecting the memory to change, but it did, and she was suddenly thrown through the Fade to somewhere else entirely: an utterly familiar place, the main Auction Square in Qarinus, as it had been when she had last seen it, but the memory wasn’t hers – it was still Nehel’s, she sensed, but it was actually his own, rather than Cairenn’s.  
Aemilia wondered why she had been brought here, and wondered perhaps if Nehel was thinking of this as he slept. She should have stopped watching – this crossed a line that they hadn’t discussed – but she found herself drawn in as Nehel appeared on the far side of the square, a female elf on his arm. Neither were slaves, and the woman was wearing mage robes, a staff over one shoulder. She was by no means his sister, and she looked (judging by how she was leaning into Nehel and smiling cheekily) like she was more than a friend.  
How long ago was this? Aemilia asked herself in confusion.  
“-was thinking on the north-west side of the city: near enough into the suburbs to be out of the city centre, but also close enough to be within walking distance, you know?” the woman was saying, an excited grin on her face. “This is going to be amazing! I’m so happy, are you?”  
“Of course,” Nehel laughed in agreement and pressed a kiss to her cheek.  
Auction Square was sort of mild to medium busy, magisters crossing it with entourages of slaves, normal citizens criss-crossing back and forth, nodding respectfully to each other. More than a few shot surprised looks at Nehel and the woman with him.  
“I doubt they’ve ever seen two elves together like this,” Nehel whispered.  
“Let’s keep surprising them,” the woman whispered back with a smile.  
Nehel was already scanning the crowd. “Do you see her?” Aemilia followed his eyes, curious about who they were searching for.  
The woman looked with him before pointing to a woman with thick, arching eyebrows on the other side of the square. “I see her. Feel free to browse and look at man things; I’m sure you’ll be less than thrilled with looking at wedding dresses with us.”  
“I can come if you want me to,” Nehel offered.  
The woman spotted the lack of enthusiasm in his eyes and giggled. “No, you go. Keep getting stared at. Soon everyone will know who we are; I’m going to be a magister!” When she said that, she overflowed with excitement and jumped up and down, squealing. “I’m going to be a magister!” she repeated, her smile unquenchable until Nehel leaned forwards and kissed her. She kissed him through smiles before pushing him away with a smirk. “Go on, Nehel. Enjoy yourself.”  
“Goodbye, Valyra,” he said, as she raced away through the crowd. Valyra shot him one more smile before disappearing among the people.  
Once Valyra was gone, Nehel looked around, clearly not entirely sure what to do with himself. Auction Square had a few market stalls set up in it that day, but nothing particularly caught his eye so, burying his hands in his pockets, he picked a side street and began walking down it, his eyes drinking in the bright shopfronts and gleaming goods for display, from tender baked goods, to intricate gold jewellery, to cloths dyed more colours than Nehel had thought existed. He found himself walking almost aimlessly. Aemilia followed him, but, knowing Qarinus better than she had ever bothered to learn what the back of her hand actually looked like, began to grow apprehensive as he unknowingly stepped into the slave quarter, where slaves purchased for general labour such as mining or production were stored, wearing rich clothes that marked him out as not belonging there. Eyes darting nervously around, Aemilia’s stomach turned as she spotted dark silhouettes lurking in alleys on either side.  
Nehel finally seemed to twig that he had got himself far out of where he should be, and paled slightly before trying to backtrack as inconspicuously as possible, stopping, pretending to fuss over a fold in his clothes, sort of parking on one side of the street, before heading off briskly back the way that he had come.  
His path, although, had been filled with slaves, none of whom looked friendly, the centre one wielding a grubby knife. Aemilia felt anger twist inside her. Where had a slave like this gotten a knife?  
Nehel’s hands went up and his breath quickened. “I’m not looking for trouble,” he said gently.  
“Well, ya found it!” the centre one snapped. “Hand over ya purse!”  
A moment of regret passed over Nehel’s face but he obediently pulled his purse from his belt and held it out to them, painfully aware of his being unarmed. The centre one indicated to his own feet and Nehel threw the purse down there to be snatched up in calloused fingers.  
“Ya got anything else valuable?”  
“Just search the bastard,” another scowled, striding over to Nehel and proceeding to pat him down violently, stopping to strike him in the stomach before she was finished. Nehel grunted and doubled over, but knew that offering resistance could cost him his life. They outnumbered him more than ten to one, and he was unarmed and unarmoured. He didn’t stand a chance against those odds, and he just wanted to get back safe to Valyra…  
The slave patting him down pulled an amulet from his neck and rings from his fingers and then, for good measure, yanked his boots from his feet and tossed them back to her comrades, who ran their fingers over the goods with glee flickering in their faces. Aemilia’s mouth was set in an expression of disgust. This was the proof that she was right.  
Nehel was on all fours now, having been beaten around by the slave, and the others pounced on the opportunity, crowding around and raining kicks and punches down on him. He cried out and tried to protect his face with his hands, but by the time they were done, he was bruised, bloody, and utterly unconvinced that he’d be able to walk away from there.  
“What do we do now?” one of the slaves asked the others quietly. “Let him go?”  
The one with the knife looked about to say yes, but the woman who had patted Nehel down shook her head. “Are you dumb? He’s seen our faces.”  
“Please,” Nehel whimpered from the floor.  
The one with the knife bit his lip and looked altogether unwilling to kill a man. The woman scowled and snatched the knife from him, and before Nehel could say a word against it, had plunged the knife into his gut. He gasped, his whole body shuddering.  
“What are you doing?” a furious voice broke the uneasy silence that had settled over the accosting party. They looked around, and through bleary eyes Nehel saw an elven slave with jagged slave tattoos and short, dark hair, although he didn’t recognise him back then. But Aemilia did. This must have been how they met.  
“Eloriel,” the woman addressed him in surprise.  
“Honestly!” Camven snapped. “I thought we agreed no more of this aimless robbery – it will bring the magisters down upon us!” The one who had previously been holding the knife had turned a rather alarming shade of green. Camven’s face was lined with irritation. “You’ll get caught for this, for sure.”  
The woman shook her head. “Removing the witnesses,” she insisted, jerking a thumb at Nehel panting in the dust.  
Camven stormed over and gathered Nehel in his arms, ignoring the shocked reactions of the slaves around him. “This is your mess; you’re lucky I’m here to fix it.” He looked at the loot that they had gathered from Nehel. “Take that to Alis Chastain – she can fence it for you, without getting you caught.”  
“What are you going to do with him?”  
Camven shot Nehel a look, eyes cold as granite. “Make sure that he’s no longer a problem.” Weak and almost unconscious already, Nehel squirmed pathetically in Camven’s arms. Camven easily held him still. “Clean up that mess,” he nodded at the blood staining the street, “and then don’t ever speak of this in public again, you hear?”  
The ragged group nodded collectively as Nehel passed out and Camven carried him away.


	15. -208 Ancient, a few days later, Weisshaupt Fortress, Front Balcony

Lavinia watched Andri, Dominik and Kaeso leave, rage bubbling dully in the pit of her stomach. ‘This is ridiculous. This is unnecessary. What is Andri thinking?’  
Dominik looked up at her and waved. She didn’t wave back.  
The small party saddled up horses and trotted out of the front gate, vanishing down Broken Tooth and heading across the plains. They had taken a map of the Deep Roads in the area, and were planning to close a few entrances. Then they should be coming back.  
Lavinia scowled. A week, hopefully, and then they would all be back. Surely. Surely, surely.  
An hour passed. Maybe two. Lavinia only noticed because the sun dragged itself across the sky, slowly turning orange. She felt abandoned, and resentful.  
Andri had placed her and Mili in charge of Weisshaupt Fortress, the headquarters of all Grey Wardens, everywhere. Mili and Lavinia were both Senior Wardens, and so technically the two highest ranking Wardens left in the Fortress since both the First Warden and the Chamberlain were now gone, but WHY HAD HE GONE?  
The First Warden was supposed to remain permanently at Weisshaupt. This was ridiculous. Ridiculous, ridiculous.  
A muffled thud reached Lavinia’s ears, and the balcony shook, just slightly. Leaning back from the balcony rail, she re-entered Weisshaupt, and, striding down corridors, she bumped into Dwyron, who was scrambling up from the basement. “What’s going on?” she demanded.  
Dwyron shook his head – Lavinia saw that his cheeks were smeared with soot and dust, particles settling messily in his wild hair. “I don’t know, but part of the basement just collapsed. It looked like explosives, though.”  
Lavinia shook her head in confusion, and was just glad that she’d been wearing her greatsword already as she plunged down where Dwyron had just clambered. He hesitated a moment before swearing quietly and following her.  
In the basement, Lavinia coughed and waved her hand in front of her face, swirling particles making the air almost unbreathable, almost opaque. But through the dark and the murk, she saw rubble where part of the room had once been… and a tunnel where a wall had once been. “Someone burst through here,” she said. “Looks like they fucked up the foundations real good, though.”  
“That’ll explain why the ceiling came down over there,” Dwyron agreed with a sniff.  
“What were they trying to find, though?” Lavinia asked herself. “I didn’t know there was a room back here.” Gradually, the dust was settling, and Lavinia felt a ball of confidence swell in her chest. She glanced back at Dwyron, saw he was unarmed, and decided she didn’t care. “Come on,” she urged. Dwyron chuckled and shook his head.  
“Don’t have a choice now that you’re in charge, eh?”  
Lavinia snorted, plunged into the ragged hole carved in the wall, and crossed the shallow crater that the blast had made in the floor. Dwyron looked around with his face crinkled up in some undefined emotion.  
The hole in the wall led into a heavily jointed tunnel that led back into the earth under Weisshaupt… a long way. Lavinia peered into the dark. “Got any matches?”  
Dwyron nodded and pulled some from his pocket, by some stroke of luck the long ones that you could hold onto for a while. Lavinia struck one and Dwyron another, and they shuffled out into the darkness together. “Got to say, Lavinia, you don’t seem very worried,” Dwyron pointed out.  
“Should I be?”  
“Someone’s blowing up parts of the fortress. I’d be. I am.” He blew softly on his match as it threatened to go out and it puffed back into life.  
“Well, Weisshaupt has stood long before we walked these halls, and it will continue to stand. The Fortress is impregnable. So, whoever’s been having some fun experiments with explosives, they are someone who is meant to be here.”  
Dwyron’s brow creased in confusion. “Who would do that?”  
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”  
After three matches each, Lavinia and Dwyron finally reached a turn in the tunnel carved back into the rock and entered an airy cavern, lit faintly by a collection of tiny skylights far above and the flickering glow of a burning torch, held by a figure crouched in the centre of the cavern, but not doing anything.  
“Hello?” Lavinia called out.  
The figure stood slowly and turned around without any edge of surprise – perhaps there was even expectation in the way he held himself and turned to face them.  
“Gallio?” Lavinia’s match burned out. “What’s going on?”  
Gallio’s eyes were cold. “Did Andri tell you where it is?”  
Glancing at Dwyron, Lavinia frowned. “Where what is?”  
Gallio pinched the bridge of his nose and turned away from them. “You’re not that good at lying,” he murmured.  
Lavinia’s eyebrows rose. “I’m lying?”  
“No. And you’re not good enough at it to convince me.” He sighed and sat down on the floor of the cavern, cross-legged, resting his chin on one of his fists. “I was so sure that it was here.”  
“What is it? What are you looking for?” Lavinia asked. Dwyron was shooting her looks that asked why she was being so calm about this. Gallio did seem to have just vandalised Weisshaupt irreconcilably, after all.  
Gallio didn’t reply, anyway, and instead the muscles of his back shifted restlessly under the fabric of his shirt. Lavinia hesitated a moment longer before walking over and placing a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged her off. “It is not here, in any case. I suppose I should get out of your hair, then.”  
Lavinia’s hand on his arm was not kind, as the one to his shoulder had been. She gripped his arm tightly, digging the nails in. “What is going on, Gallio?”  
“I am not a cook, Lavinia. I only came here to find it, and when I finally thought I had, and the First Warden gave me the perfect opportunity to find it without anyone capable of stopping me around by first sending away the Chamberlain and then himself, it turned out that it wasn’t here after all.”  
“What are you looking for?” Lavinia demanded.  
Gallio snorted. “You still think I might respond to you. How cute.”  
Lavinia’s eyes narrowed.  
“I’m leaving this stupid Fortress, finally. Best to just get out of my way.”  
Sensing, perhaps, danger on the air, Lavinia backed away from Gallio and her greatsword swung measuredly into her hands. “Tell me what’s happening. Tell me what you’re looking for.”  
Gallio’s hands went into his pockets, and he shrugged with a smile. “No.”  
“You’re not getting out of here, Gallio. Just tell me what’s going on right now.”  
Pity was written across his features. “No,” he repeated, and then he turned into blue smoke that shuddered up through the air, through the roof of the cavern and away. Lavinia stared after him.  
“A mage?” she stammered.  
“Looks that way, eh?” Dwyron agreed nervously.  
She turned back to look at him, almost speechless. “What… what the fuck?”  
Dwyron just shrugged at her. “Have you got any idea what he might have been looking for?”  
Lavinia shook her head. “Not a clue.” Feeling stupid now that she was wielding a greatsword at an empty cavern, she sheathed it on her back. “Shall we have a look around? There has to be something to tell us what he thought was down here.”  
Dwyron nodded, and proceeded to scrutinise the place. Lavinia picked up the torch that Gallio had left on the floor in the centre of the cavern and looked around. “This place doesn’t look very old,” she observed, “and man-made, I think?”  
“Human, not dwarven,” Dwyron added.  
Lavinia spotted some carvings on one wall and went over, running a hand over them as she drew close. “This is the Grey Warden heraldry,” she narrated as she walked down the intricate patterns. “These are… darkspawn? Being killed, and bleeding...” Dwyron came over and looked with her as she ran her hand down the patterns of blood pouring down the stone. “They’re catching it in goblets and drinking it. This is how Grey Wardens are made.” Behind her, Dwyron sniffed. “This doesn’t explain much,” she said.  
“What happens next?” Dwyron paced down the carvings. “It’s the Grey Wardens getting older. This one’s got an impressive beard.” He chuckled. “Then it looks like they die. But these ones don’t want to die.” He looked back at her. “It doesn’t show why they die.”  
“Oh, of course. No one ever got to tell you about the catch.”  
“The catch?”  
Lavinia shrugged. “Being a Grey Warden doesn’t come for free, otherwise we might just let everyone give it a go. Of course, you’ve got the chance of death when you first taste the darkspawn blood, but after that… you’ve got thirty years, give or take. No exceptions. Eventually, the Blight catches up with us all.”  
Dwyron’s eyes went to the floor.  
“Sorry. We should have told you earlier.”  
A reluctant smile bounced up onto his face. “It’s alright. Couldn’t have me running off, eh? Anyhow, it’s worth it if we can stop all this.” He looked back to the carvings. “What do you think this place is? Some kind of record?”  
“I suppose so. But If Gallio thought that whatever he was looking for was down here, then there must be something her about whatever he’s looking for.” She kept following the carvings. “These ones don’t want to die. So...” She pulled a face of confusion at the mess of stone that followed. “I don’t know.”   
“They’re trying some weird stuff,” Dwyron suggested.  
“Something like that. Then this one is reaching out for something, but there’s nothing there.” She squinted. “A cure? They don’t want to die, after all, so they’re probably looking for a cure. Do you think that might be what Gallio is looking for?”  
“Well, if he’s nearing the end of his time-”  
“No, wait. He’s not a Grey Warden. It… doesn’t make sense, then. Why would he want the cure?” She laughed, then. “Besides, there wouldn’t be much point in him hiding what he was looking for if we would be able to find out what it was by looking at the wall behind him. That’s far too storybook.”  
“So what do we do, stand-in First Warden? About Gallio?”  
Lavinia pursed her lips. “Well, we can’t just let this go. He blew up part of Weisshaupt! And I have a feeling that whatever he is looking for, we should get to it first.”  
“Sounds sensible enough.”  
Lavinia began to lead him back out through the tunnel to Wiesshaupt’s basement. “Come on. We’ll need to persuade someone to fix the wall, even though now there are only like twenty people left in the Fortress. And who’s going to cook now?” She blew her cheeks out. “We’re going to have to close off some of the wings. Save people time maintaining them.”  
They came out the other end of the tunnel and left the basement. Lavinia slammed the doors closed and bolted them. “In case Gallio tries to come back. Might slow him down, at least.” She left the torch in an empty bracket on the wall. “Could you find Mili and tell her to find me in Andri’s office? I need to speak to her about all of this.”  
Dwyron nodded and raced away, leaving Lavinia in a swirl of her own thoughts.


	16. -208 Ancient, the Silent Plains, Grey Warden Camp

After finding that memory of Nehel’s, Aemilia was ten thousand times more uncomfortable. Nehel and Camven seemed to notice, but didn’t say a word, and just stopped trying to speak to her, leaving her with her own thoughts.  
Aemilia found herself conflicted. On the one hand, she should not have watched that memory in the first place, so should definitely just leave it now. But on the other, she couldn’t help but wonder what on earth happened next. Because obviously Nehel and Camven were… close… now. So what changed from Camven saying that he was going to stop Nehel being a ‘problem’ (which suggested to Aemilia to no small degree that he was planning a murder) to them being the way that they were now? And what happened to Valyra?  
Aemilia burned with curiosity. But she felt wrong when considering looking further into the memories. She should ask him. She shouldn’t keep it quiet. But she did. And, for fear of prying further, Aemilia didn’t seek any more of Cairenn’s memories, even though they were so tantalisingly close.  
So, after five almost silent days, the three travellers finally reached the Silent Plains, and Aemilia pointed out the outpost on the horizon as they settled down for another night. “We’ll get there soon tomorrow,” she said.  
Camven and Nehel nodded at her and curled up together to sleep. Aemilia couldn’t sleep for a long time, but finally she managed to pass out, and they rose in the morning to immediately mount their griffons and make it to the camp well before noon.  
The Silent Plains Outpost was large and bustling, and not exclusively Grey Wardens either. Only the front few ranks consisted of pure Wardens, and retreating back was the best part of an army, assembled of a mismatched collection of soldiers, largely from Tevinter, but there were also many Rivaini and Ciriane soldiers, marked by their heraldry.  
At the sight of the griffons soaring overhead, many stopped to stare, and Aemilia, Nehel and Camven came down in the Grey Warden settlement in a flurry of griffon screeches and Wardens scrambling clear. Aemilia smoothly dismounted and brushed herself down, pulling her robes down: to ride Spectre, she had to rearrange her robes to show a fairly daring portion of leg, so she recovered her dignity as she strode up to the nearest Warden, slinging her baggage over her shoulder. “I’m looking for the High Constable,” she said.  
The Warden just pointed between the tents. Aemilia nodded a thanks and went that way. Camven tried to get off his griffon and fell off; he scrambled up and brushed himself down, clearing his throat and following Aemilia, pink tinting his cheeks. Nehel dismounted and caught up to him, nudging him in the side with a laugh.  
Through the tents, Aemilia scoured the place with her eyes, seeking the familiar square shoulders and shaved head of High Constable Salvius. Instead, an elf with nut-brown skin and a short but explosive burst of red hair approached her, simultaneously writing something on a clipboard which she handed to one of the other Wardens flanking her as she reached Aemilia. Her expression was cool and unreadable. “Dura.”  
Aemilia scoffed. “Excuse me, I’m looking for High Constable Salvius?”  
The elf let out a bark of a laugh. “Dead. Weeks ago. He assigned me as his replacement.” She clasped her hands behind her back. “Now, Dura, the mages’ tent is ove-”  
Aemilia raised a hand. “Okay, okay. Stop. Back up. First, I’m having my own tent, don’t even start talking about mages’ tents, and second, it’s Chamberlain, thank you very much.”  
Somehow, despite the fact that Aemilia was a good head taller than this elf, she managed to look down at the Chamberlain of the Grey. Her face did not change, but even so, everyone in the immediate vicinity seemed to understand that the mood had changed, including Camven and Nehel, who had been standing silently behind Aemilia, and simultaneously took a step back. It was as though the elf had suddenly sprouted invisible spikes – except Aemilia didn’t seem able to see them, and stared the elf down.  
The smile that the elf broke into was mirthless. “Ah, Dura, you seem to be forgetting that I outrank you. I will give you your tent, and you will sleep in it. I will call you by whatever I so choose to call you. I am High Constable Dany Ashathari, and this little corner of hell is my world. Sure Weisshaupt’s been nice and cosy for you, but this is not Weisshaupt, and I am not First Warden Andri Rapace. He’s probably already dead by now, anyway.”  
Aemilia’s lips thinned until they were practically non-existent.  
The High Constable cocked an eyebrow. “He must have told you.”  
Aemilia just scowled. She had figured it out. Of course she had figured it out when he looked so sad when she left and hadn’t been expecting to see her again. But… but…  
Maker, it hurt.  
“In any case, Dura, you’d better get used to this real quick if you like your ass not whipped. And you’re going to have to cut those robes down. Hips or higher.”  
Appalled, Aemilia raised a finger and shook her head. “Um, no. Clearly you’re not aware, but these are the ancestral robes of House Dura, so I am not cutting them down for you, thanks.”  
“I don’t care if they’re the bloody ancestral robes of the Archon himself,” the High Constable shot back, “and neither would he, since clearly you're wearing them. Cut them down. You can’t run in a fucking dress.”  
“They’re not a dress.” Aemilia was growing redder and redder by the second. “They are enchanted robes, and they’re an heirloom.”  
“They’re a fucking dress.” The High Constable took another clipboard from the Warden on her left and started ticking things. “The mages tent is over there,” she added with a jerk of her pen. “I can loan you a knife and some bloody leggings if you need them and the impracticalities of fighting in a dress happened to not occur to you.”  
“No,” Aemilia snapped, and found that she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Ashathari was right: technically, she did outrank Aemilia as the Chamberlain of the Grey. What kind of precedent would it set if she ignored her commanding officer?  
Honestly, this scenario had never played out in her mind before. Andri had always just sort of let her have the run of the place, and never really enforced his superiority, and Vel Marinus might have commanded the others, but he had always allowed Aemilia her freedom. This was… entirely unexpected. And unwelcome.  
The High Constable watched these thoughts run around Aemilia’s head, handing the second clipboard back. “The mages tent is over there,” she repeated. “Do you need anything else, Dura?”  
Aemilia was probably redder than she had ever been in her entire life, but she shook her head and headed to the mages tent like an incoming hurricane. Nehel felt sorry for whoever was the first to bump into her in there.  
Once Aemilia was gone, the High Constable turned her eyes to Nehel and Camven. “I see that whichever of you was the Warden-Recruit survived the Joining on the way here. I offer you belated congratulations and the information that your thirty-year timer has now begun.” She folded her arms and leaned forwards. “Welcome to the Grey Wardens, Warden-Ensigns.”  
Camven and Nehel looked at each other.  
“Rogue and warrior, I see,” the High Constable observed by their weapons. “Tell you what, go east and look for Marc Hoffmann. There’s a job that you might be able to help with.”  
“Okay?” Nehel agreed quietly.  
“You’d do well to address me by my title, Ensign. I can forgive Dura for that, for now at least, because she’s been in a whole different world, but she’ll get accustomed to this one. Still, my advice is to adapt as quickly as possible. Marc will show you somewhere to sleep. Sort you out. Honestly, you’re not really worth my time.”  
Camven nodded, and he and Nehel walked off. Nehel whispered, “Hoffmann? Like Lavinia and Dominik?”  
“Maybe. We can ask.”  
Meanwhile, Aemilia burst into the spacious mages tent (as well as one can through canvas flaps) to find rows of low, simple beds and a wide, fenced off circle in the middle, open to the sky. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant, but it was awfully feeble.  
Her eyes were aflame when they turned to the Warden mage closest to her. “Find me a bed,” she commanded.  
The mage made a sort of choked noise, then grinned. “Find one yourself.”  
“I am the Chamberlain of the Grey-” Aemilia began.  
“Well, I’m sure that someone so capable is perfectly well within their comfort zone when asked to find a bed,” he replied cheekily.  
Aemilia scowled.  
“I’m Lorenzo,” he said, rising from the bed that he had been sitting on and holding out a hand for her to shake. “And you must be Aemilia Dura. The High Constable’s been waiting for you to show.”  
“Andri sent word ahead?”  
Lorenzo nodded. “Along with the news that his Calling had arrived and that he would be heading into the Deep Roads soon.”  
“What is he doing about that? Who’s to be the next First Warden?”  
Flopping back onto his bed, Lorenzo cocked his head. “You don’t know how First Wardens are chosen?”  
Now that Aemilia thought about it, she didn’t. “I suppose not.”  
“Well, the previous First Warden doesn’t choose the next. It has always been the way that once a First Warden steps down, the next emerges, clear as day. They excel, or do something significant, so that everyone knows that they are meant to be the next First Warden. It is simply known.”  
Aemilia’s eyes narrowed. “That doesn’t seem exceptionally efficient.”  
“It is just how it is, I suppose.”  
“How do you know this? Who even are you?”  
“I’m Lorenzo.” He was grinning like an idiot.  
Aemilia’s face was stony. “And who even is that?”  
Lorenzo shrugged. “Well. I’m from Llomerryn. I am a Grey Warden and a mage, funnily enough, given where I am.”  
Aemilia waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. “That it?”  
“Maybe I’ll tell you more when you’re being a little nicer,” he said. “There’s a free bed over there.” He pointed. “Make yourself at home. And try to unwind? Just a little, Chamberlain.”  
“Unwind? We’re on the front lines; isn’t that the stupidest thing to try to do?”  
“Not if you’re trying to sleep, it’s not.”  
“It’s noon.”  
“And I’m tired.” Without another word, he pulled his blanket up to his chin and fell asleep.  
Aemilia was left staring at him, unsure how to feel, but knowing that it was a rare occasion in her life when she had been this frustrated at everything around her.  
With nothing better to do, she trailed over to the bed that Lorenzo had pointed out and sat primly on it, then remembered that she had to cut down her robes. Cringing internally at what she was about to do, she pulled a dagger from her belt (of course she had a knife – how incompetent did Ashathari think she was?) and cut through the fabric just below the hips – a small act of rebellion – careful not to cut her own skin in the process. Hemming was easy when one was a mage, and soon enough Aemilia had a very very very short dress, her family heirloom in pieces in her hands.  
Maker, what would her mother say if she knew?  
Feeling terribly exposed, Aemilia found a pair of leggings in her bags and pulled them on. Well. She had never been dressed quite like this before.  
Ashathari hadn’t actually given her anything to do, so Aemilia decided not to do anything that she might possibly want her to do, and instead sat cross-legged on her bed, tempted to seek more memories in the Fade. Nehel wasn’t there, though, so there were no easy visions of Cairenn, and even if he had been there, Aemilia sensed that she might not have found Cairenn anyway. She didn’t feel like Cairenn had ever been to the Silent Plains; there was no trace, no familiarity. There was no Cairenn here.  
So what else was there? Here, the Fade was almost as barren as the place itself, small hills and ridges of dark earth the only landscape features. Hardly any memories. “Hardly surprising that they call them the Silent Plains,” she muttered.  
So she walked. There were spirits, but they avoided her, like they always did. A dreamer with Aemilia’s power intimidated spirits and demons alike simply by existing.  
The memory took her by surprise – she almost stumbled across it, and the vision hit her like a sack of bricks.  
“AEMILIA! GIVE IT EVERYTHING!”  
It was her. Aemilia, with the voice of the girl elf (she vaguely recalled that Isera was her name) reaching her ears from behind… a… dragon…  
Cold fear dripped down Aemilia’s back as she watched herself scream and throw her arms wide, magic rushing from her in a great tide, the dragon writhing backwards.  
Then the memory slipped away, like a wave retreating from the shore.  
“No!” Aemilia cried out. “No! I needed to see that!” She waved her hands around as if she could catch it between her fingers. “WHAT WAS THAT?”  
Mind speeding at a thousand miles an hour, Aemilia recalled the version of herself that she had seen: older, but not much so, grazed and bleeding, her robes a wreck (the same robes she was wearing now, trimmed down as they were now), and her hair shorter and streaked with blood and mud. She hadn’t looked… afraid, exactly. It was as if she knew that she should be afraid, but had washed it down with anger and exhilaration and adrenaline.  
And she had been fighting the archdemon. With the slave. She hadn’t seen much else – it had been a blur, a mess.  
“I need to see that again! I need to see more!” she yelled, waving her fists at what passed for the sky in the Fade. “Show it to me!” The Fade just sat silent, spirits moving ceaselessly on the edges of her vision. Aemilia slammed a fist into the ground in irritation; fuelled by dreamer magic, the action carved a crater in the ground as she let out a scream of frustration.  
“Yeah. Unwind,” she muttered scathingly, every muscle in her body taut as a wire as she threw herself back out of the Fade and back to herself. Her eyes flickered back open.  
A small crowd had gathered around her bed: mages of all shapes, sizes and abilities were staring at her. Her look was murderous. “What?” she snapped.  
Lorenzo was heading up the crowd, and he bent over a little to scrutinise her. “You were shouting. And glowing a little.”  
“I was in the Fade. Clearly that’s something that you incompetents are a little unfamiliar with,” she snapped.  
“None of us glow when we go to the Fade,” Lorenzo pointed out.  
“None of you were the prodigy of House Dura.” Aemilia might as well have had a thundercloud hanging over her head. “None of you are the Chamberlain of the Grey.”  
Lorenzo shook his head, a wistful smile on his face. “None of us are so effing angry, either.” He rolled his eyes. “The High Constable wants you to help teach us some magic, apparently.”  
“Me. Teach. You?” Aemilia just glared.  
“Come on, Chamberlain.” Lorenzo grinned. “Can’t do any harm.”  
Aemilia snorted. “Untrained mages like you can do every harm.”  
“So train us?” Lorenzo tutted. “We’re not all useless, you know.”  
“That’s definitely up for debate,” Aemilia snarled.  
Lorenzo waited for Aemilia to do something – change her mind, probably – and then turned his head to the flaps of the tent. “Told you,” he said.  
Aemilia followed his eyes to see the High Constable standing there, her arms folded, and, if possible, she wound up even tighter, not entirely sure how to respond to this development.  
The High Constable reached over her shoulder and pulled a long, graceful bow into her hands. Notching an arrow, one of eyes squeezed shut as she pointed it towards Aemilia. The only thing she said was, “Which finger?”  
The colour in Aemilia’s face drained away. “W-what?”  
“Which finger?” the High Constable repeated, pulling the bowstring tighter.  
Aemilia sprang to her feet. “I’ll train them!” she exclaimed, waving her hands in front of her face in surrender. “I will train them ‘til they drop.”  
The High Constable lowered the bow, let the bowstring relax. “Yes,” she agreed. “You will.”


	17. -208 Ancient, the Deep Roads

Dominik felt dirty with arrows that he had looted from darkspawn strapped to his back, but he didn’t have an awful lot of choice, because he had run out forever ago. Even so, with his familiar bow in his hands, he felt okay. Particularly because the First Warden was with them, and no-one beat the First Warden.  
Andri Rapace was a rogue, and wielded a blade in each hand, but for him, that meant two longswords. His resilience and skills reminded Dominik of the legionnaire scouts that he had seen on his visits to the dwarven cities while recruiting, but somehow at the same time his stealth was second to none. Maker, Dominik felt safe with Andri around.  
Well. Usually. Dominik still felt okay, but Andri looked… haunted. Gaunt, with eyes like deep bruises in his face. His smile was persistent, and his voice betrayed not a hint of worry, but it could still be seen. Especially at night, when Andri tossed and turned and mumbled to himself, perhaps thinking that Dominik wouldn’t notice. Dominik noticed.  
Dominik wasn’t sure if Kaeso had noticed, but he figured that he probably hadn’t, because he was Kaeso.  
They hadn’t ventured far into the Deep Roads so far, mostly only straying ten minutes or so below the surface in order to find a good place to close the tunnel and stop more darkspawn from coming up. But this time, they had gone further than they ever had before, and Dominik was feeling the mass of rock above him like a physical weight on his shoulders.  
“We should turn back. I mean, probably.” He fidgeted with his bow, fingers and eyes twitching restlessly. “We might get lost down here, and then where would we be, First Warden?”  
Andri turned and started walking backwards, smiling. “Don’t worry, Dominik. Kaeso could find his way out of here blindfolded.”  
Kaeso didn’t look up, or respond. He rarely did unless he was directly addressed.  
“There has to be some sort of gate soon, hasn’t there?” Dominik fingered his bowstring.  
“I’m sure we’ll find one.” Andri’s voice was certain, but it had been almost an hour. Dominik wasn’t hopeful.  
Kaeso was staring at the floor. He seemed to be thinking. “What are you thinking so hard about?” Dominik asked him quietly.  
Kaeso snapped to attention. “I am memorising the route,” he said. “And I am wondering why Mister Rapace looks so unhealthy.”  
Dominik was surprised. “Got any ideas?”  
“I am trying to recall if I have been told when Mister Rapace became a Warden,” he continued.  
Dominik shrugged. “I don’t...” Realisation struck. “...know.”  
“This looks promising,” Andri called back to them, waving them over. Dominik was suddenly very afraid. No. No way. “I reckon I can make this work.” He had found a dwarven barrier door, and was fidgeting with the controls on the near side, practised hands flying over the various parts and pieces. “Good job I know what I’m doing.” He removed a small metal bar and held it between his teeth, making muffled observations of what he was doing around the bar until something clicked and he shoved it back in. The door didn’t move. Andri frowned at the controls.  
“What happened?” Dominik asked, fidgeting, fidgeting.  
Andri stood and rubbed his hands together. “There must be something that I’m missing,” he said. “I might have a look at the controls on the other side.”  
Dominik took a step forwards, heart racing. “If you make a mistake, then you’ll get locked in there,” he pointed out.  
Andri’s smile was reassuring. “I’ll be fine, Dominik. I know what I’m doing.”  
Dominik’s eyes narrowed. “Let’s go, then.” He determinedly followed Andri as he passed through the door. Kaeso followed absent-mindedly. Andri had a knowing smile on his face as he knelt beside the controls on this side of the door.  
Kaeso’s head snapped up. “I am able to sense an ogre,” he said.  
Kaeso had always been better with sensing the darkspawn than Dominik, but sure enough, Dominik sensed the familiar feeling of sickness that meant darkspawn. “Just an ogre?” he asked, sweat breaking out on his forehead.  
“I am able to sense several hurlocks, and perhaps a shriek.”  
Dominik turned to Andri. “We should get out of here, quickly.”  
“I can get this thing closed. Go and wait on the other side, and I’ll get this done.” Kaeso went obediently. Dominik did not.  
“I’m not leaving you,” Dominik replied. “I’ll run with you.”  
Andri’s eyes were imploring. “Dominik, just go. It’ll be fine.”  
“Why don’t you just tell me what to do? I refuse to risk you, First Warden.”  
Rapace’s jaw tightened. “Dominik, hold out your hand.”  
Dominik thought he’d misheard. “What?”  
“Hold out your hand.” Dominik did. Andri pulled the First Warden broach from his chest and placed it in Dominik’s hand.  
If Andri had listened hard, he might have heard Dominik’s heart shatter.  
Dominik’s face crumpled. “Andri...” He choked. “You’re dying? That’s what this whole trip is about? And you didn’t tell us?”  
Andri stood and pulled Dominik into a hug, feeling Dominik’s tears wet against his cheek. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.  
Dominik pulled back first, holding Andri at arm’s length, refusing to meet his eye. “There is nothing to be sorry for. I mean, there is nothing that could be done, and of course, I, ah...” He backed away from Andri, through the dwarven barrier door, just as he saw the ogre that Kaeso had sensed emerge, roaring, at the end of the corridor. “Goodbye, Andri!” his voice broke.  
‘I only wish that you had let us say goodbye properly.’  
‘I only wish that it didn’t have to end this way.’  
‘I only wish...’  
Andri saw the ogre and took a steadying breath. He pulled an envelope from his jacket and slid it across the floor; Dominik snatched it up.  
He shifted something amidst the controls. The dwarven barrier door slammed closed.  
Dominik fell to his knees.  
Andri pulled his longswords from their sheaths. For a second, he thought frantically, wondering if there was something that he might have forgotten to do, but he reasoned with himself that there was no point thinking about that now. There was no way back now.  
The Calling had been teasing him, haunting him, for weeks. It had disturbed both his sleep and his waking hours. It had left him shaken and afraid. It had led him here.  
He could not choose the next First Warden – and even if he could, he didn’t know who he would have chosen – so he had deferred most all of his authority to his High Constable Dany Ashathari. He knew that she could be relied on. She was no First Warden material, but she could lead the Wardens as they fought the darkspawn. That was no small cause as to his sending Aemilia to the front lines; perhaps she would temper Ashathari’s harshness a little, even while Ashathari inevitably humbled Aemilia.  
Hm. It was a little optimistic, but Andri was hopeful. They would pull together, surely.  
Weisshaupt he had left in the hands in Lavinia and Mili, in good faith that the two of them could manage the few Wardens left there. Of course, they would have to deal with Gallio (Andri knew all about him, and what he was seeking) but he had faith that they could handle him well enough. He was just one man, after all, while the Wardens were many.  
It seemed that he was taking much on faith. But that was okay. After all, what did one have if one didn’t have faith?  
It was said that the souls of the dead lingered in the Fade after death, and then moved on, to wherever ‘on’ was. Andri was a little excited about finding out, in all honesty. His last great discovery.  
“For the Grey Wardens!” Andri bellowed, as he sprinted towards the ogre lumbering towards him. He took it down. He slashed through the hurlocks that came afterwards. He sliced up a shriek.  
Andri hefted his swords in his hands and walked down into the Deep Roads. His last great adventure.


	18. -208 Ancient, the Silent Plains, just east of the Grey Warden Camp

Marc Hoffmann looked almost identical to Lavinia, Nehel acknowledged when they found him on the fringes of the Grey Wardens Camp, so they must be siblings. The staff on his back screamed ‘mage’, but he wasn’t wearing anything resembling either robes or armour, and instead was dressed in more casual wear, loose and plain.  
He was perching thoughtfully on an outcrop of rock, but looked up when he heard them coming. His confident smile was something that Nehel couldn’t imagine passing the face of either Lavinia or Dominik. “Hello! I’m Warden-Commander Marc: you’re who Dany sent to help me out, right?” He had a slight accent, also something unfamiliar in the voices of his siblings. Sounded a little Ciriane, but Nehel wasn’t sure.  
“That’s us,” Nehel replied.  
Marc looked at them expectantly. When they weren’t sure what to say, he giggled. “Names, you two. I’d like to know your names.”  
“Oh. I’m Nehel Adaris, and this is Camven Eloriel.” Camven waved. “We’re sort of new.”  
“I don’t mind.” He stood and beckoned for them to follow. “This shouldn’t take too long.”  
“What are we doing?” Camven asked.  
“I had an idea. Well, I sort of had an idea. Dany helped. But I figured, right, that – well, you know you’ve got your basic catapults, but they’re pretty small-scale? I figured that, because it’s pretty much impossible for us to do any kind of big damage against that dragon, that I might be able to figure out a way for catapults to work, but with bigger stuff. Like, the size of boulders.” He splayed his hands wide, excitement clear in his face. “I asked Dany to send me some people to try to make a prototype. Needed a rogue to deal with some of the metallic work – because I haven’t got a clue – and a warrior to help with the heavy lifting. Dany didn’t really want to spare anyone for a flight of fancy, but she said that the two new guys might be able to help me out!” He gave them a thumbs-up. “So thanks!” He sort of reminded Nehel of Aemilia when she was in a good mood.  
“How exactly will it work?” Camven look interested.  
“Well, the energy that sends projectiles flying from a catapult comes from the tension in the string, right? I figured that maybe we could get more force with a counterweight, if it swung down, and then the other end of a bar swung up, sending something at the end of the bar flying. It relies a lot on the principles of pendulums and...” He trailed off. “I mean, it’s quite complicated.”  
“I’m willing to listen,” Camven insisted. “It’s interesting!”  
Marc grinned at Camven and proceeded to explain the theory of his idea as they walked further and further away from the camp, to where there was a pile of timber and tools and metal bars. “I already had Dany arrange the stuff,” Marc explained. “I just needed the bodies. Everyone in the camp already has plenty duties, you see. Dany keeps us working hard. Which keeps us alive.” He began pointing Nehel and Camven towards tasks that needed doing. They did as he asked; Camven’s intrigue was unfaltering and he awaited the prototype’s completion with a measure of apprehension, while Nehel was grateful for the plain tasks lain out before him, that he could just do. The banality was strangely comforting.  
After three hours of hefting and heaving and Camven fiddling with metallic parts, they had created… something. It was a long wooden pole (about twice as tall as Camven) on a sort of axel, in turn on a platform. Marc looked at it with no small amount of triumph in his expression. “Looks pretty good,” he said. “Now we have to see if it works.” He added a weight (with considerable help from Nehel), and then (also with help from Nehel), slotted a large rock into the complicated rope net that he had been weaving for the best part of the last hour that was tied to one end of the pole.  
Eyes gleaming, Marc pulled a level on the side. Nothing happened.  
He frowned and lay on his back to fidget underneath. Something clanged, and he shuffled back out. “Okay, here we go,” he announced, and pulled the lever again.  
The weight swung down, and the rock in its net swung up at terrifying speed. Nehel cried out in alarm and Camven staggered backwards as the rock… flew. High, and long.  
“What!” Nehel exclaimed. That thing was heavy. It had taken both him and Marc together to even lift it, and it had still been difficult.  
It came down at least a hundred yards away, almost definitely more, and landed with a massive CRASH that put Nehel’s teeth on edge. Marc let out a whoop of euphoria. “It worked!” he yelled. “If we made it bigger, what size of rock do you think we could throw? And, more importantly,” he put his hands on his hips, “how much damage would that do against the big guy?”  
“This is amazing!” Camven told him. “It must have taken you ages to figure out how to do it.”  
Marc shrugged, but he looked smug. “A while. It was pretty easy once I figured out the basic principles, though. But now Dany will have to start making them. These could end the Blight if we use them well, right?” It was a rhetorical question. Marc was drunk on his creation. “This is great!” He turned in a circle, grinning at them, then clapped his hands together. “I have to show Dany. Are you two okay to watch it?”  
Camven nodded. “Sure.”  
Marc winked at them and raced off towards the camp, his staff thumping heavily against his spine. Camven took it as an opportunity to sit down on the edge of the… thing, precariously perching. “Marc must be some kind of genius,” he said, running his hand along it. “This contraption is incredible. And who’d think of it?” Nehel perched beside him. “These may just end the Blight.”  
Nehel might have gone along with this train of conversation, but he had been thinking of something for a while. “I may have had a thought.”  
Camven’s face was expectant. “What about?”  
“Well, the night of my Joining… the night when Aemilia went really quiet. I had a dream about the day we met. You don’t think she might have seen it? Well, I had a lot of dreams about screaming darkspawn and the archdemon and all that, but I doubt she’d have been that bothered by those.”  
Camven’s eyes went to the sky. “Maybe,” he said. “I think that if she wants to speak of it, then she will. I also think that she definitely doesn’t trust me.” He blinked. “If you want to know, you’d better ask her.”  
Nehel wasn’t looking him.  
“You’re thinking about Valyra,” Camven said. Nehel nodded. “I can come up with something comforting if you want, but I don’t think you do.”  
Nehel leaned into him, still staring at the ground. “I wish I hadn’t had to leave her like that. Of course, I don’t regret it, or you, of course I don’t, but I should have...” He just sighed and closed his eyes. Camven wrapped an arm around him. “I’m just glad that you’re here,” Nehel said eventually, after grappling with the emotions wreaking havoc within him.  
“I’m glad that I’m here too.” Camven smiled in Nehel’s hair.


	19. -208 Ancient, Weisshaupt Fortress, Andri’s old quarters

Andri favoured brightly coloured cushions and throws rather than blankets and pillows like anyone else. As such, his bed looked more like a square which a rainbow threw up clouds all over than a bed, but even so, Lavinia could see the indent where he had slept the night before he had left; he never made his bed.  
Lavinia fell into the indent, her knees giving out beneath her. She pulled the cushions against herself and soaked them with her tears.  
Dominik was back.  
Kaeso was back.  
Gallio was missing.  
Aemilia was gone.  
Andri was dead.  
“How did everything turn to shit so quickly?” Lavinia lamented the cushion pressed against her cheek. “There are hardly any of us left, Andri is fucking dead, and the Blight is far from over, and fuck everything!” She threw a pillow at the wall; it wasn’t satisfying enough, but she didn’t dare to break anything of Andri’s. She already felt a little like she was defiling. Everything was how he had left it.  
Now feeling suddenly uncomfortable, she sat up, her hair mussed and her cheeks tear-stained. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, and felt the envelope that Dominik had given her crease against her side. Oh right. She hadn’t been able to bear reading it, and had just run away.  
"I’m a mess,” she sniffled, swinging her legs down to the ground and pulling the letter from her jacket. “Come on, Lavinia. You’re half of a First Warden now.” The envelope was thicker than she had realised, and she opened it, surprised when several thinner envelopes fell out of it, each with a name written on it in Andri’s curly handwriting. The first name that she saw was ‘Marc Hoffmann’ and her blood ran cold. “What?” She picked up the envelope and held it cautiously in her hands as if it might bite her. “Andri, what?” She was tempted almost unbearably to tear it open and drink in the words that Andri had left for Marc, but then she sighed and cast the envelope aside, letting it flop into the cushions. “For you, Andri,” she muttered.  
The next name was ‘Mili Aedans’. Lavinia set that one on her other side, knowing that she would find Mili and give it to her as soon as she found her own name. Then there was ‘Dominik Hoffmann’, ‘Aemilia Dura’, ‘Aurelia Ziani’, ‘Alis Chastain’, ‘Lorenzo De Valencia’, ‘Dany Ashathari’ and, finally, ‘Lavinia Hoffmann’.  
By this point, Lavinia’s head was spinning. She didn’t even know who half the people Andri had left letters for were, let alone how to find them. She could probably just send them all to Aemilia and make her deal with them – she was the Chamberlain of the Grey, after all, so should be receiving reports from all Grey Wardens in Thedas.  
She held the letter with her name on with reverence, cradling Andri’s words as though they might shatter if she handled them too roughly. Tears pricked her eyes again but she held them back.  
She was about to open the letter… and then she didn’t. She couldn’t… she couldn’t bear it. So, the letter went back into her jacket and stayed there. She didn’t have anything else of Andri’s. Maybe she would keep it, like a talisman.  
“Lavinia?” Dominik’s voice was soft, a little hoarse from the emotions that he was holding in. Lavinia heard him enter Andri’s office, one room along from where she was.  
“I’m in here.” Lavinia wasn’t expecting her voice to break. It did anyway.  
Dominik came in and was about to sit beside her on the bed when he saw the letter to Marc on her left side. “Is that… from Andri?”  
“Yes. There’s one for you, too.” Lavinia passed his letter to him.  
He fingered it nervously. “Do you know what’s in them? I mean, was there one for you?”  
“There was.”  
“What did it say?”  
“I haven’t read it yet.” Lavinia sighed and lay back on the bed. “I want to wait, for a bit.”  
“Are you alright if I open mine?”  
“It’s your letter.” Dominik chewed his lip as he opened his envelope and pulled out the letter within. His eyes flew over it. “What does it say?”  
“I mean, nothing that you’d be very interested in.” His lip was starting to bleed a little; he must have been chewing it like this for a long time. “I mean...” He swallowed, and turned to her. “He’s saying goodbye. This is his closure.”  
Lavinia closed her eyes. “What are we going to do now, Dominik? We have no First Warden.”  
“Apparently he’s delegated most of his authority to the High Constable,” Dominik said, glancing back at his letter, “and some to the Chamberlain. The Warden-Commanders are in charge of their relative areas. We just have to manage Weisshaupt, I guess.”  
“And Gallio,” Lavinia grunted.  
Dominik cocked his head. “What happened to Gallio?”  
Lavinia placed a hand on his shoulder. “We have got to get caught up,” she said resignedly, as way of answer. Then she looked down at the letter for Marc sitting on the bed. “And we’ll have to get in touch with Marc, as well.”  
Dominik stared at the letter as well. “Do we know where he is?”  
“Last I heard, he was heading for the front lines.” Lavinia sighed. “But that was months ago. I don’t even know if he’s alive.”  
“I’m sure he is.” Dominik smiled a little reluctantly, but when he turned to Lavinia her expression was stony. “Lavinia?”  
“I’m just wondering if his still being alive would be a good thing,” she muttered.  
Dominik’s forehead crumpled. “Lavinia...”  
“I’m going to my room,” she said.  
“Lavinia, wait-”  
“I’m going to my room,” she repeated, resting a hand against the doorframe as she stood and turned back to speak to Dominik. “I’m going to sleep for a while. Then, I’m going to manage Weisshaupt Fortress, find Gallio Capitus, speak to Marc, recruit more Grey Wardens, and end the fucking Blight.” Her eyes were aflame. “This is just the beginning, Dominik. Get ready.”  
Dominik smiled. “I’ll be ready,” he said.  
She slammed the door behind her.


	20. -208 Ancient, The Silent Plains, Grey Warden Camp, Mage’s Tent

Aemilia couldn’t sleep, which was extraordinarily unusual and extraordinarily irritating. It had been bad enough sleeping on the hard ground on the way here with Camven and Nehel only a few feet away, but here she was on a lumpy bed with the sleeping breaths of a mage on either side of her, in a tent where there were dozens and dozens of them under one thin canvas roof, which rain happened to be pattering against as if to mock the fact that everything was already way too loud. Aemilia was extremely used to her own bedroom, in her own suite, at the top of a tower which was essentially hers, allowed to do her own research and manage her days however she pleased.  
She reflected, though, that perhaps Andri had been too soft on her. She was a Grey Warden, and she had her duty to end the Blight just as much as every other Warden that had been made since the first. Reluctant guilt stirred within her.  
“Am I a bad person?” she asked the canvas roof. It just continued to patter with the rain, but Aemilia imagined that it was laughing at her. She stuck her tongue out at it.  
Somewhere outside the tent, she heard Nehel’s voice, but faintly, such that she couldn’t make out the words. Camven laughed, and then she heard Marc.  
“Marc’s here?” She sat up in bed, and for a moment was going to race out to throw her arms around him and catch up – it had been far too long – but then she didn’t, and she lay back down again, her heart hammering in her chest. “Just go to sleep, Aemilia,” she told herself, but she didn’t seem to be able to do as she was told. Usually she was so good at falling asleep (training as a mage had taught her to fall asleep in a matter of seconds) but today her own body seemed to be betraying her.  
She stared at the canvas ceiling. Outside, Marc said something else and footsteps trailed away. Aemilia heard two sets of footsteps pad closer to the mages’ tent and then branch off to somewhere close by. Clearly Camven and Nehel were placed somewhere near.  
Sleepless as she was, Aemilia was sorely tempted to go find them, see if there were any other memories clinging to Nehel. There was no Cairenn here – from what she could tell – but perhaps there would be something else?  
‘Aemilia, are you really hoping that Nehel might be thinking about what happened next with Camven in Qarinus? Are you really that invasive?’  
The answer was yes. Aemilia slipped out from underneath her blanket and left the tent, pulling a cloak around her against the drizzle and the chill of the night air. She lit a small light in her palm and followed the most recent footprints tracked into the damp mud. They led to a tiny little tent construction (clearly a recent addition, likely done earlier that day, since the Warden camp was busy enough as it was) and Aemilia couldn’t help but bristle at the thought that the two of them had been given their own tent while Aemilia had just been shoved in with the other mages. Still, she bottled her frustration and, as quietly as she could, settled down next to the tent, gathering her cloak beneath her to keep her robes (well, what was left of them) free of mud. She heard sleepy murmuring within, and the fear of discovery made sweat break out on her forehead. How would she explain this away?  
The murmuring stopped and then there was only the sound of breathing. Aemilia curled up in her cloak, and, despite the rain, and her restlessness that night, she managed to fall asleep.  
As she had suspected, there was no Cairenn hovering around Nehel. There was only one memory hovering around Nehel, and it was his own. Aemilia was about to reach for it, ignoring every bound of decency that she had ever been taught, when she noticed that there was also something else.  
A memory that wasn’t Nehel’s was there. It wasn’t Camven’s, either. It wasn’t anyone’s.  
It didn’t manifest itself like the fireflies of Cairenn that bustled around Nehel, and instead was an elven man, frozen in the middle of running a hand through his hair, one of his eyes closed in a wink. His armour was beyond modern standards, but not like Cairenn’s, either.  
Aemilia walked towards him, entranced. A completely new story?  
When she brushed a hand against his arm, he unfroze and the landscape unfolded before Aemilia. Beside the man was a griffon that looked almost as proud as he did, its head raised high and graceful. A little way away was an elven woman, also with a griffon. She had a staff strapped to her back. They were standing on a wide expanse of near nothingness, with naught but a few scrubs of stubborn grass to dot the area.  
“-trust me, don’t you?” the elven man finished saying, and his eye sprung back open, his hand dropping to his side.  
She rolled her eyes. “If we’re late, it’s on you.”  
“I just want to look around a little.”  
“There’s nothing here!”  
“But this is it! The Silent Plains, where the First Blight ended.”  
“We are going to be so late,” the woman muttered.  
“Come on, Isseya. Soon enough, we’re going to be walking in the footsteps of the Wardens who did it the first time around.” He started walking backwards, spinning in a vague circle, face tipped towards the sky. “I wonder what they were like.”  
“If they were anywhere near so cocky as you, I don’t know how they ever killed an archdemon.”  
“Well, I doubt they were so charming as me, so I have that as an advantage.” He put a fist under his chin, fluttering his eyelashes.  
“This is literally pointless. Are you done?”  
“Almost.” He stood and just took in the Plains for a moment.  
Aemilia took the time to really look them both over. The man was admittedly handsome, with high, arching cheekbones, brilliant green eyes and a careless nest of curly blond hair that spiralled delicately down his neck. He held himself with utter confidence, something in the way he arrayed himself shouting out that he was practically swollen with self-esteem. But… something about his smile was infectious.  
The woman was nothing like him, plain, with lank, brown-blond hair sticking to her scalp. She had a hood up and a scarf drawn over the bottom half of her face, and from what Aemilia could see of her eyes and forehead, she could guess why. Her eyes were red and veined, hidden under furrowed brows; her skin was deathly pale. She looked almost… Blighted.  
But she wasn’t. Aemilia could already feel from the two of them that they were Grey Wardens.  
Isseya’s griffon pawed the ground restlessly. “Hush, Revas,” she urged, placing a hand on it. “My brother’s just being ridiculous.”  
Her brother grinned at her. “Fine, Isseya.” He strode back up to his griffon and mounted it with ease. “Just you watch. Someday soon, Crookytail here and I are going to be famous.” He patted his griffon’s neck with a wistful smile as his sister mounted up alongside him. “The unlikeliest of heroes, that’s us. But all the more compelling, for that.”  
Isseya just stared at the sky, waiting for her brother to make a move to fly.  
“Watch out, world, here comes Garahel!” he whooped and sprang into the sky.  
The memory dissolved and Aemilia woke up, but didn’t move, and just let rain drip down her face. “I wonder what Garahel did,” she whispered to herself, but didn’t stay long, and sprang up, racing back to the mages’ tent, digging out her notes and transcribing the memory before she could forget so much as a word. The clarity of it even led her to attempt to sketch out what Garahel had looked like before she remembered that she couldn’t draw for shit and scribbled it out, writing instead a short list of his physical characteristics, and then those of his sister Isseya.  
Aemilia lay back down in bed, leaving her damp and muddy cloak in a soggy pile underneath it, mind whirring. ‘Is this about another Blight? A different one. It looked like a different time to Cairenn...’ She rubbed a hand against her eyes. ‘Well, that’s specific. It could be the second, third or fourth Blight. Great.’ She rolled over. ‘When will this one end? I wish the Fade were more helpful. I wish it came equipped with a little calendar to help me out.’  
She sighed at the ceiling and felt sleep pull her back down. In the Fade – now memory-less – she sat and crossed her legs. “What are you trying to tell me? You give me stupid half visions of me fighting a dragon, and then a random one about two Wardens visiting the Plains for no reason? What do you want me to do?” She often spoke to the Fade like this. Her old teacher, Faustus, did so as well, and it was something that she had picked up. Did she believe that the Fade might speak back? She wasn’t sure. But she thought, maybe. She believed that there must be something beyond this life, after all. Who was to say that there wasn’t also some kind of omnipotent… Fade… ghost… or something?  
“What do you want me to do?” she repeated. “Why are you giving me these memories?” Lying down, she reflected. “I’ve never heard of anyone else ever finding future memories. Faustus theorised that it might be possible, but no one else has EVER found them! There has to be some reason why you’re giving these to me. What am I meant to do with them?”  
“Often talk to the Fade, do you?”  
Aemilia yelped and scrambled to her feet. Not so far away from her – close enough that she should have noticed, damn – was a woman who looked very… agricultural. She was fairly old, with greying black hair and keen eyes that were a brown so pale that they were almost yellow. Her clothes were shabby; she looked like a farmer’s wife, or someone equally mundane. But she was here, and she was a mage.  
Aemilia blushed furiously. “I don’t think that’s any of your business!” she replied heatedly, then added in a slightly less aggressive but still definitely distrustful voice, “Who are you, anyway?”  
“You can call me Asha,” the woman replied, after a thoughtful few seconds.  
“What, is that not your name?”  
“Well, you haven’t told me yours, either,” Asha pointed out with a wry grin.  
Aemilia wrinkled her nose. “I am the Chamberlain of the Grey,” she announced.  
“I don’t think that that’s your name,” Asha said.  
“Well, of course it isn’t!”  
“So what is your name?”  
“Aemilia,” Aemilia relented, folding her arms and rocking backwards and forwards on the soles of her feet. “How are you here? You’re not a Grey Warden; where are you? As in – in Thedas?”  
“That’s a bit of a forward question.” Asha chuckled. “I’m here: isn’t that enough?”  
“Why? I’m sleeping, go away.”  
Asha just laughed, though it was almost closer to a cackle. Aemilia bristled.  
Then Asha stopped and looked at Aemilia expectantly. “What were you talking about just now? Future memories?”  
“Yes,” Aemilia hissed.  
“That’s fascinating. I’ve never heard of anyone finding those in the Fade.”  
“Me neither. As you’ll know if you’ve been listening in.”  
“Maybe a little. Not often I see fellow travellers of the Fade.”  
“There are other mages here,” Aemilia replied in confusion.  
“Yes, but they aren’t as aware as you or me.” Asha was slowly moving closer to Aemilia, but slowly to the extent that you might not notice if you weren’t as paranoid as Aemilia was right then. “I’m guessing you’re a dreamer.”  
“And I’m guessing you’re a crazy lady who should leave me alone?” Aemilia scowled. “Take your questions elsewhere – I don’t care for them.”  
Asha bowed her head and licked her lips, the trace of a frown creasing her brow. “There is a messenger bird coming towards the camp,” she said, matter-of-factly. “It’s carrying a letter for you, along with several others. It’s a very good bird, and a couple of others are accompanying it; the letters must be important.”  
“What? How do you know this?”  
“I’m not trying to unsettle you, Aemilia. Believe it or not, I’m interested in actually getting to know you a little, because you seem interesting. I’d love to know how the pride of House Dura ended up a Grey Warden.” Velia’s face flashed across Aemilia’s mind’s eye. Asha smiled softly. “And what happened to Velia.”  
Aemilia’s eyes widened and she opened her mouth to shout questions at Asha, but she was gone in the blink of an eye, as if she had never been there. Aemilia glared at the place where she had been and let out a scream of frustration. “Now you’re just taking the piss,” she yelled at the sky, and raised a middle finger at it for good measure.  
She woke to Lorenzo shaking her. “Chamberlain! A letter came for you in the night.”  
Aemilia’s heart skipped a beat to hear that Asha’s prediction had come true, but she hid her doubts. “Bring it to me,” she commanded.  
Lorenzo shook his head. “The High Constable has it. Said she wanted to speak to you about it herself.” He raised an eyebrow. “Apparently she got one too. I’m assuming that they’re important.”  
Aemilia hauled herself upright and vaguely patted down her hair before plodding out, a fresh cloak pulled around her, towards the main open-air tent, under which Ashathari brooded over a wide, wooden table with papers strewn across it, a worn map with slits where daggers had probably been thrust through it by Ashathari in fits of emotion.  
“I hear there’s a letter for me,” Aemilia said through chattering teeth at the chill of the dawn.  
“Yes,” Ashathari answered brusquely, and picked up an envelope which she threw at Aemilia. Aemilia snatched it from the air, and saw her name written on it in handwriting that she would have known anywhere: the curly script of First Warden Andri Rapace.  
Aemilia tensed almost to the extent of accidentally ripping through the paper but swallowed and looked up at Ashathari. “I heard that you got one too.”  
Ashathari held up a ripped envelope with her name written on it. “That I did.”  
“Why do you look so angry? What’s in them?”  
“Just read the fucking letter, Dura.”  
Aemilia bit down a retort and pulled the letter free, her eyes drinking in the words.

Aemilia,  
First of all, sorry. I’m a coward, and I should have spoken to you properly, but I sent you away anyway. What a great First Warden I turned out to be.  
But I didn’t write a whole letter just to apologise for my incompetence. I have a few things to tell you. (I’m guessing that Dany is watching you read this; there are a few things here not for her eyes, but stick to your own judgement. I trust you.)  
You are my Chamberlain. That role was made to be mostly administrative, but I think that you can be the one to change that: prove that knowledge is actually pretty badass, and take down a fuckload of darkspawn while you’re at it, yeah?  
Aemilia, I sent you to the front lines so that between you and Dany you can run the Grey Wardens until a new First Warden presents themselves. The two of you can carry us forwards. And you’d better, because until there’s a new First Warden you’re the only ones who can command the Grey Wardens. Now more than ever, we need unity.  
You have not been a Grey Warden for as long as I have (obviously) and while you are more than adept at sensing darkspawn, I don’t believe that you can understand the archdemon quite so well as I. It speaks to the horde, and – just sometimes – I can begin to comprehend it.  
I think that it knows that this Blight is coming to a close. And I think you do too. It has lasted for many generations before us, but there is a shift in the winds. I regret that I won’t be able to see the end of it, but I think that you will. Remember it so that you can tell me the story when you come find me, out wherever people go when they die.  
You told me, though, didn’t you, about your visions of the Fifth Blight, so we know that this has to end. I have faith in you, Aemilia. I know that you will allow the future to unfold as it is meant to.  
Well. While this has been heartfelt yet generic so far, this is where you need to make a decision for yourself, Aemilia, because I’m leaving you with a task.  
Your old teacher, Faustus Leon. Ask him what happened ten years ago out in the Black Marsh. Get the whole damn story. Whatever it takes.  
And then, when you have, I want you to kill him.  
The decision is yours. If you can’t, or decide that he doesn’t deserve it, then you don’t have to, and I hope not to burden you with any guilt. This is all that I can ask of you, Aemilia. I have deferred everything else either to Dany or to Lavinia and Mili back at Weisshaupt.  
Take time. Grow. Help Dany.  
But find Faustus. However you decide to deal with him, it is a loose end that cannot be left undone. And I think that you are the only one who can.  
I’m sorry. For everything.  
All my love,  
Andri

Aemilia looked back up at Ashathari, who was now flushed with impatience, her own letter beginning to tear as her fingers tightened around it. “What the fuck does it say, Dura?”  
Aemilia just set her letter on fire and let the ashes run through her fingers, strangely and exquisitely blank. Ashathari stared at where the letter had been and opened her mouth – probably to swear at Aemilia again. Aemilia cut her off with, “You first.”  
Ashathari looked about to heatedly object to Aemilia’s request, but then she sighed. “Bunch of shit I’m not interested in sharing,” she said, but the venom in her voice was half-hearted. “And then apparently there’s some job I have to let you do. So what’s so important that I have to let you piss off whenever you want?”  
Aemilia blinked. “Bunch of shit I’m not interested in sharing,” she echoed Ashathari, with the barest trace of a laugh.  
Ashathari was scowling. “Are you going to want to leave soon?” she asked exasperatedly, turning back to the map curling on the table. She stabbed another dagger into it to stop it from winding up.  
“No,” Aemilia said. “That’s… that’s okay. I’ll let you know.”  
“Good. You can keep teaching, and fighting, and fuck up some darkspawn. I’ll take you out this afternoon for a test run.” She folded her arms. “See what you can do.” Aemilia burned with indignation at Ashathari’s desire to evaluate her when she hardly needed to prove anything any more, but she swallowed it and nodded. “In the meantime, you can take this letter to Lorenzo.” Ashathari held out another envelope with Andri’s writing on, this time ‘Lorenzo De Valencia’. Aemilia nodded again. “And one more thing-”  
“There’s a letter for me?” a yawning voice asked. Aemilia’s eyebrows shot up, and Marc’s mouth dropped open when he saw her. “AEMILIA!” he cried, eyes gleaming in familiar joy. “It’s been far too long!” he added, pulling her into a hug that almost choked her but she was smiling, wrapping her arms around him in return.  
“Great to see you, Marc,” she agreed.  
Marc stepped back and looked her up and down. “You look sort of different. Your hair is longer.”  
“That happens when it grows,” Aemilia pointed out.  
He laughed, a full, hearty laugh that Aemilia hadn’t heard in far too long. “But I heard that there was a letter?” Ashathari grunted and threw his letter at him. It was also from Andri, but Aemilia chose not to ask about it. Marc fingered in and wrinkled his nose, tucking it then inside his coat. “That all you needed? Do I have clearance to keep making my...” He grinned and licked his lips. “Trebuchets?”  
“What is a trebuchet?” Aemilia had to ask.  
Ashathari waved a hand. Aemilia bit down her insistence to have her question answered. “You can, but I can’t spare any more people. If the two new guys want to help, then they can, but they need to make a decision today, Warden-Commander. If they want to help you, they’re your responsibility.”  
“Warden-Commander?” Aemilia repeated. “You’re moving up in the world, Marc.”  
“What can I say?” He turned back to Ashathari. “I’ll speak to them. But… you should know, that this may really help. Two guys aren’t enough, Dany.”  
“Two guys are all I can spare.” Ashathari sighed. “Off you go, Marc.”  
Marc chewed his tongue for a moment before nodding and racing away. Ashathari’s attention came back to Aemilia. “And one more thing,” she continued, as if Marc had never been. “Do you have any idea who the fuck Aurelia Ziani is?” She held up another letter from Andri.  
Aemilia blinked and shook her head. “No. I… don’t think she’s a Grey Warden. I’ve never heard that name before.”  
Ashathari nodded and cast the letter carelessly onto the table. “I thought as much. Guess I’ll have to track her down.” She jerked her head at a Warden standing beside her, who scuttled away. “But here we are. Now we dig back in to this fucking war.” She folded her arms. “Get set, Dura.”  
Aemilia smiled, just a little. “I’m on it.”


	21. -207 Ancient, Weisshaupt Fortress, Mage’s Tower, Laboratory

“Shit! Down!” Isera yelled, hitting the floor and protecting her face in a practised movement; the two other mages there also ducked down as the darkspawn blood bottled on Isera’s workstation burst with a violent CRACK, sending glass flying across the room and hot red splattering across the surfaces. “Sorry!” Isera cried awkwardly as she carefully stood back up, beginning to collect the glass with careful fingers. “I messed that one up.”  
“No worries! This is only the fourth time I’ve broken my nose this week,” Alessandra laughed from across the room. Gemet just grunted as he stood back up and helped with the clean up. Gemet didn’t talk much.  
“Have either of you made any progress?” Isera asked. She wasn’t expecting anything, but it felt good to ask anyway, if just to keep her energy up.  
Gemet grunted ‘no’. Alessandra said, “I don’t know, I don’t suppose making the blood yellow is very productive?”  
Isera blinked. “Did you actually make it yellow?”  
Alessandra help up a vial of viscous, muddy yellow liquid, and smiled dubiously. “Yay?”  
Isera laughed, but was cut off by her stomach growling. “Lunch?”  
“Oh, yes.” Alessandra put down her work and Gemet grunted ‘yes’, falling in behind the two women as they headed to the dining hall. The three of them were the only mages left in Weisshaupt Fortress now, and were working on the Joining: making it safe. It was what Andri had had Aemilia doing before she left, so they had gone through her notes, to little avail. It was clear that she hadn’t actually especially cared, and had done JUST ENOUGH to get by without being complained at.  
Ultimately, Isera thought that it came down to changing the person, not the Joining itself, because only strong people survived the Joining, so perhaps there was some kind of magic that could protect them? As, surely, if they somehow reduced the potency of the blood itself, then it wouldn’t work properly anyway.  
In the dining hall, Lavinia’s blonde bun was slowly falling into her face as she frantically removed most of a boar from the spit with Dominik’s help before pulling out a knife and beginning to carve it raggedly. Dominik pulled potatoes from the fire while Kaeso came in with a platter of roasted vegetables that he had drizzled with honey, judging by the glaze and the smell.  
Lavinia stared at the vegetables, then up at Kaeso. “You can cook?”  
Kaeso blinked. “Yes.”  
“Fuck. You should have said that before.”  
“You did not ask.”  
Lavinia just stared incredulously at Kaeso’s back as he laid the vegetables out on the table. “I should just make a list of every question, ever,” she said to herself, “and ask him them, one by one.”  
“Maybe you should have just asked him to help with the food earlier on,” Dominik suggested, as Kaeso strode back to the kitchen to clear up.  
“I was worried he would set himself on fire, or something.” She stopped carving and stood straight, the knife hanging carelessly in her hand. “I feel like I’m raising a toddler.”  
Dominik smiled. “He’s not nearly as bad as you were when you were a toddler,” he teased.  
“Shut up!” Lavinia elbowed him before hacking off the boar’s leg.  
Isera, Alessandra and Gemet sat around the single table that was still in use in the Weisshaupt dining hall; Isera’s stomach growled again as she smelled the food, and her mouth started to water. Dominik came and sat beside Isera, flushed from the heat of the fire. “Hello,” he greeted.  
“How are you? Any word?”  
“No word.” He shrugged, dissatisfaction tightening his mouth. The search for Gallio Capitus that had been going on since his explosion of part of Weisshaupt and subsequent disappearance had proved fruitless. It seemed that he had been true to his word, and left the Fortress with no intention of returning. Isera probably wouldn’t have given it much more thought, as clearly whatever he was looking for was not here, but Lavinia seemed extremely bothered by it, and Isera knew that it played on her mind almost every hour of the day. She had a line between her eyebrows that never went away. The responsibility of her new role managing Weisshaupt was showing in her every action; she looked like she was carrying a physical weight on her shoulders all the time, and she sat heavily beside Dominik once she had shredded the boar sufficiently and put what was needed of it in the centre of the table, the rest to store. Kaeso came in with plates and cutlery and laid them out, and soon enough, every Grey Warden in Weisshaupt, bar the two who were half-heartedly manning the walls, Anton and Josef, a double act who were in effect joined at the hip, and also were spectacularly unlucky, drawing lookout duty more often than not, was gathered to dine. So, around the table were Kaeso, Mili, Lavinia, Dominik, Isera, Alessandra, Gemet, Dwyron, a silent, wide-eyed dwarf named Kalara, and a smiley man named Lyle. They were the only Grey Wardens in the Anderfels… and Isera.  
Isera kept forgetting that she wasn’t actually a Grey Warden. She was living with them, acting as one, fighting darkspawn. She had even ridden a griffon a couple of times!  
Every once in a while, she would meet Dwyron and they would go to the top of the tower again and sit and look at the sky, and every time they went Dwyron sweated and shook a little less. There was still no hope of him taking to the sky on a griffon any time soon, but he was improving, and Isera swelled with pride to see it.  
But it was strange to be here, and not be what they were.  
Crunching through the boar and the – actually really tasty – vegetables that Kaeso had prepared, Isera contemplated again her decision not to undergo the Joining. It was not like anyone was excluding her because of that, and every Grey Warden accepted her presence and help without question. Which left it more of a question about what she should do for herself, and for the world.  
Like Andri had said, every Warden.  
But no. She was helping the Wardens as much as she could, and it didn’t matter whether or not she had choked on a cup of blood. She was happy with that. With this.  
The Grey Wardens laughed and chattered over their meal. Life at Weisshaupt wasn’t exactly easy, but it was consistent and good and about as safe as it got in this messed up world. Isera had had to use her magic for combat exactly seven times in her time there, but even so she could feel herself improving. She had devoured the mage’s tower’s libraries eagerly, and her understanding of her own power had easily been multiplied by ten: magisters weren’t exactly thrilled about telling their slaves how to fight.  
It was almost easy to believe to believe that outside their little haven there was no trouble, that the Blight didn’t exist. That everything was okay.  
Except the nights when updates came from elsewhere: Aemilia, as Chamberlain, managed most of the reports, but remote outposts still sent word to Weisshaupt where they expected her to be, and the letters always came with death counts, long lists of names that made Lavinia sag under the pressure of her invisible weight and made Mili’s eyes shine before she looked at the ground. Every once in a while, there would be a name that they knew, and there would be a second of wide eyes and open mouths before the slammed doors and sounds of objects smashing from far corners of the Fortress. Then Isera remembered what the Grey Wardens were doing, what the Grey Wardens meant. How this might be the end of the world if not for them.  
But then days would pass again, and weeks would blur by, and it became distant again.  
Isera wasn’t sure how to feel. She was already almost forgetting what life had been like before she, Camven and Nehel had staggered into Lavinia, Dominik and Dwyron in the forest. It seemed storybook and faraway.  
She still got letters from Camven, and sent letters in return. He was well back from the fighting, he said, working on some contraptions called ‘trebuchets’ (which Isera couldn’t even guess at how to pronounce) along with a Warden-Commander named Marc Hoffmann. He had said that he supposed that Marc was related to Lavinia and Dominik but that he never spoke of them, so hadn’t asked. Isera hadn’t either. She knew them both well now, but it still didn’t feel like her place to pry. Apparently Nehel had considered helping with the trebuchets as well but decided that complex mechanics was not his greatest strength, and so had become a soldier, much more in danger than Camven ever was, but proving his skill and aptitude for battle every day that he was out there slaughtering darkspawn.  
It reminded Isera of the life that she and Camven had taken Nehel away from. Unlike Isera and Camven, who had picked up their abilities from here and there, Nehel was professionally trained, attending paid academies across the Tevinter Imperium to increase his abilities, to refine his aptitude for violence.  
Isera wondered what he might have been. He would have been the husband of a magister. He would have been rich, living as the gentry of Qarinus.  
And then he wasn’t.  
“What are you thinking so hard about, Isera?” Dwyron cocked his head at her across the table.  
Isera snapped to attention. “Oh. Sorry.” She shook her head. “Miles away.”  
He chuckled. Isera smiled weakly, and the dinner wore on until the plates were clean. Kaeso stood and began gathering the crockery before carrying it away to wash. Lavinia watched him, slightly squinty-eyed, and Isera knew that she was trying to figure him out.  
She thought that everyone was trying to figure him out, at least a little.  
“Where is Kaeso from?” she asked Dominik.  
“I don’t know.”  
“Where is Kaeso from?” she asked Alessandra.  
Alessandra shrugged, humming gently.  
He came back through the dining room to walk out and pad up the stairs without another word. Isera pushed out her chair. “I’m going to go back to the lab,” she said to the table, before leaving. Arriving back into the lab, though, she was preoccupied, her mind whirring. She had opened the door on memories of before, and now they were bounding through and kicking up a storm. She sat at her station and sighed.  
She ran a hand over her tattoos, winding around her features and down her neck. They left tiny, shallow indentations in her skin, because she had been cattle and no one had cared. Camven’s were worse.  
Among slaves, it had always been us versus them… except for Camven. Camven always cared. Even when he probably shouldn’t.


	22. -210 Ancient, Qarinus, Slave Quarter

Three panicked thuds. Frail wood shuddering under the beats. A laboured creak.  
“Camven! I was so – what the – who is this?”  
The voice of the slave who had picked him up. “Just let me in, and grab the poultices. He’s lost a lot of blood.”  
Blurry sky turning into blurry brown. Wood? It groaned with the shift of the wind. “You owe me a big explanation,” the first voice muttered. Rustling. Something clanging.  
“Just be quick.” Eloriel. Camven. The elf who had carried Nehel. What did it mean? What was it for? Cool hands on his forehead; a face swimming between the darkness of nearly-closed eyelids. “I think he’s going into shock.” Shock? Maybe.  
“Here.” The first voice said. Female, but low.  
“Keep pressure on while I do this.” Something pressing on his stomach, but distantly, like it was a thousand miles away. Nehel was floating. Was he?  
He must be. He floated away.  
He came back into his body slowly, like his consciousness was leaking out from his bones to refill his flesh gradually. Slowly, slowly, he started to feel again.  
Sweat running down his face. Was it sweat? Hot, thick. Blood? Tears?  
His eyelids came open, glued by sleep, lashes catching together. Light burned. He barely had the energy to grimace.  
“Are you awake?” A soft voice. Eloriel. Camven.  
Nehel just let out a breath, a slight hum all the sound that he could make.  
“That’s good.” The same blurry face, leaning over him. “It looked tenuous for a second there.”  
Another hum. All he could do.  
“Sorry. It’ll take a while longer for you to recover. But we’ll get you home, soon as possible.”  
Not even a hum. Nehel was floating again.  
He woke up to a spoon in his mouth and choked. Someone cried out – the female voice – and the spoon was retracted. “Shit, you were asleep,” she exclaimed, retreating from his bed. Nehel’s eyes opened properly for the first time in days and he looked around.  
He was in a very small wooden hut – a shack, more like – which was so flimsy that light was filtering through the walls. He wasn’t even really on a bed: it was a pile of coats and blankets on the floor, which was disgusting – Nehel’s stomach turned.  
The woman who had been spoon-feeding him was a slave, which sent fear coursing through him, but her expression was just uncomfortable. Her dark hair was pulled back from a pinched, haunted face in an insane number of braids. “Sorry,” she said, when she saw his appalled expression.  
He just choked again, his throat closing up.  
She bit her lip. “Camven!”  
A moment, and the door of the shack creaked open. Camven looked to her, and then to Nehel shaking on the floor. “You can go, Isera,” he said softly. She nodded gratefully and dashed out of the door.  
Nehel just shook.  
Camven knelt beside him. “Can I have a look under your bandages? See how you’re healing?”  
Nehel just shook.  
Camven’s eyebrows tilted. “Can you tell me your name?”  
Nehel just shook.  
Camven’s mouth twisted. “Can you tell me anything?”  
“If you’re going to hold me hostage, just tell me that,” Nehel snapped suddenly, his voice hoarse and croaky but furious.  
Camven blinked. “No.”  
“Then let me go! I don’t want to be here! I want to be home!”  
His eyes closed and opened again: unspoken irritation. “You can leave if you want,” he explained slowly, “but you’re very wounded. And I can’t protect you from all the slaves outside if you stumble out like this in the middle of the day.”  
“So they’ll kill me if I go outside?” Nehel hugged himself, but his voice was steel.  
“Probably.”  
“You’re fucking savages,” Nehel hissed.  
Camven swallowed but just ignored that. “Can I please look at your wound? I want to help.”  
“This is all a fucking lie. I know it. A dirty trick.” Nehel was almost boiling with rage. “You just can’t stand your own inferiority. Let me go. I command it.”  
“Can I please look at your wound? You’re bleeding through the bandage. I think it’s reopened.”  
“I command it! Let me go!”  
Camven didn’t let that pass another time and this time clamped a hand around Nehel’s neck, pushing him to the ground and pressing a finger to his lips. “If you keep shouting like that,” he said softly, “you’re going to alert everyone here that I have saved you. They think I have killed you and buried your bones to solve our problem. But I didn’t. I am trying to save you and get you home. Now be QUIET.” His eyes were fire.  
Nehel just shook.  
Camven drew back, and put his hands up. “Swear at me. Insult me. Call me whatever names you want. Just do it quietly so that I can get you home.”  
Nehel’s jaw clenched, and then he fully appreciated the pain racking his torso, and looked down to see blood dripping out through the bandages bound tightly around his waist. He hated it. He hated everything. But he lay down, and let Camven treat him.  
It was two days later that Nehel was walking around again, but he didn’t let Camven and Isera see that. Only when they had left the hut did he shakily get to his feet and test his resilience, staggering around the hut, to abruptly throw himself back down on the bed when he heard anyone draw near. The wound was closed, but could easily reopen with little provocation. He was fragile. But he wanted to go home.  
He had searched the hut from top to bottom (which hadn’t taken very long) and hadn’t found anything like a weapon. He just needed something that would let him protect himself long enough to leave the slave quarter, and get home to Valyra. Oh, he missed her so much.  
“I just want to get home to Valyra again,” he whimpered as he dragged his feet around the hut as though he would find something that hadn’t been there before. “I just want to go home.”  
Then, he heard a noise coming through one of the flimsy walls and stopped breathing, heart hammering in his throat. A low voice, almost a growl; fabric rustling, and – oh shit! – the clink of metal. Nehel wound up in excitement, and despite the fear that was making his blood run cold in his veins, he dropped to the ground and shuffled to the wall, pressing his eye against the gap at the bottom: the walls were so flimsy that they didn’t even attach to the ground, and were just wooden planks stuck between four poles. Through the tiny gap, he saw another similar hut very close to this one, and beneath the gap at the bottoms of its walls, he saw feet and blankets moving, before hands retracted, the feet traced away and the blanket was left alone.  
Nehel stared at the blanket, mind racing. What was that metal sound? Something sharp?  
He bit his lip and looked over his shoulder, to the door. Camven and the girl didn’t follow any kind of routine as far as he had been able to tell, so there was no way to predict how long it would be before they returned.  
He stared back across the gap, gauging that he could probably yank the blanket out under the gap; he would just have to hope that the metal things came with it, and use them to escape.  
He begged fate to bless him with a knife, at least.  
He hesitated a second more before his arm flew out across the gap and he yanked the blanket towards him – he could have sworn that he had never moved so fast in his life – and soon enough he was clutching it in his arms, so terrified that he could have thrown up.  
And, sure enough, he could feel something sharp pressing through the blanket and into his chest. Exhilarated, he ripped it open and two tiny, dull blades fell out onto the floor. Shivs. They were barely the length of his hand, but that would surely be enough.  
His fear seemed to have disappeared as if it had never been there and he tossed the blanket back across the gap, sweaty hands tightening around the blades. He was getting the fuck out of here.  
It seemed like an eternity of waiting, his sheets pulled up to hide the shivs, until Camven finally came back and nodded a gentle greeting, moving to the meagre pile of pots and scraps of food in the corner that passed for a kitchen. He had his back to Nehel.  
Nehel was on his feet and had a shiv pressed against the back of Camven’s neck in under a second. Camven froze, every muscle in his body winding up like a spring. “I see,” he said, and turned around so that he could face Nehel, the shiv hovering at his throat.  
Nehel was sweating through his clothes. “Lead me out of here, or I will fucking stab you.”  
Camven’s eyes closed in irritation but he replied measuredly: “You are not healed yet. I was going to take you back in a couple of days, when you’re fit.”  
“And why the fuck should I trust you?”  
“I saved your life,” Camven suggested.  
Nehel just scowled at him.  
Camven sighed. “You can go if you want, but I owe you no favours. Find your own way home.”  
“Lead me out of here, or I will stab you!” Nehel threatened, pressing the knife into Camven’s skin.  
Camven frowned. “I owe you no favours,” he repeated, and swatted the knife away, raising his eyebrows as Nehel’s arm was beaten away as easily as a child’s. “You’re in no state to be wandering around, but I refuse to help you any more. You’re threatening my safety and the safety of my sister. Go.”  
“Take me home!”  
“You going to stab me? Really?”  
Nehel’s hand shook uncontrollably. Camven sighed and pointed to the door. “Get out.”  
Nehel had heard the phrase ‘saw red’ before, but he had never quite understood. Suddenly he was just so angry that he couldn’t process what he was doing until his knife was buried in Camven’s shoulder.  
Camven just gasped as Nehel reeled back, so pale that he looked to faint.  
Nehel felt bile rising up in his throat and almost vomited right there as he saw a neat bloodstain forming on Camven’s shirt, and the grubby handle of the shiv sticking out. Camven’s knees buckled and he landed with a clatter among the pots.  
Nehel couldn’t run and he was alight with pain, but he staggered out of the hut and, ragged as he was, no one gave him any trouble as he stumbled through the slave quarter and somehow, through some miracle, he found his way back to his home and slumped against the door, tapping a hand weakly against it until it opened and he fell inside, right into Valyra’s arm. She almost screamed when she saw him before squealing and wrapping her arms around him in relief, babbling about how worried she had been. Nehel returned the embrace with what little strength he had until she called for a doctor and he was treated safely in his own bed, blood seeping out through his bandages, again.  
He heard her talking to her mother through a haze of shock and pain. “What happened to him?” “Who bandaged him up?” “Where has he been?” “How did he get hurt?”  
But, for some reason, all he could think about was Camven’s face when Nehel had stabbed him: that look of utter surprise and horror, and maybe, just maybe, and edge of betrayal. Guilt gnawed at him. He didn’t need to stab him. He shouldn’t have.  
He was home, and that was all that mattered.  
Wasn’t it?


End file.
